Not in Beacon Hills
by Cuba Endeavour
Summary: That missing friend. That green light. That memory you don't quite have. That idea that didn't work. The silly broken foot that brings you back to your home town and re-opens the cold case of what happened to Scott McCall. Stiles can't come back to Beacon Hills without following that one red string he never found the end of.
1. Introduction

**Introduction**

 _A hospital again._

 _It was a familiar ceiling. He'd woken up to similar ceilings far too often._

 _From boy to man, he returned to consciousness from injury or illness to the same ceiling._

 _It was smooth apart from the dimples around the light fixed at the centre of the rectangular room and at the far end, near to the door, the ceiling had the texture of cottage cheese. He smiled, groggily, he'd done that. He'd had such an intense fever, caught from a visit to the Hale house, that the heat from his body in the bed below had started to melt the ceiling. Even the curtains had caught fire._

 _From boy to man…_

 _He swam in and out of consciousness for a moment and then forced himself back again._

 _He was a man now. Why was he in the hospital because of visiting the Hale house in the rain? When had he ever been to the Hale house before it burned? He hadn't. So why was the ceiling melting?_

 _He felt panic, and pain, and an inability to get out of the bed. That was when something moved through the air. He tried to see it but there was just a Will-o'-the wisp of light and shape, flickering out of sight._

 _He was dying._

 _Drawing in a desperate breath to cry out, two cold palms clasped the sides of his face and he was overcome with a need to surrender to unconsciousness again. The fear subsided, along with the pain, and his feeble struggles fell still._

 _A face loomed over his as he slipped away. He knew that face._

 _It was a reminder of his childhood, of his greatest tormentor, a lifelong guilt, and someone he knew was dead._

 _The face smiled down at him as her powers flowed through the ghostly fingers and into his head._

 _The ceiling was swallowed up by the blackness._


	2. Cursed

**Cursed**

curs·ed

[kur-sid, kurst]

adjective

1.

under a curse; damned.

2.

deserving a curse; hateful; abominable.

3.

bad things are happening but you can't be bothered to find an explanation

Origin:  
1250–1300; Middle English

* * *

 _Safe._

 _Cold, lost, but safe._

 _Something warm, against his face, and that smell was nice. He knew it. He liked it. A sound that calmed him, excited him, and then scared him when it abruptly ceased._

 _A scream cut it off. There was anger and protection and loss and then…pain._

 _Unbelievable pain._

 _His eyes tore open and he saw the Hospital room again. Saw his protector, his furious guardian, and he gasped out to plead for help. The twisted expression turned toward him and melted into kindness, it was eerie and wrong. That face never looked at him like that. Something had to be wrong. The face loomed closer and the pain went away._

 _He caught his breath and licked his lips, about to ask what was going on, when his eyelids grew impossibly heavy. He wanted to reach up and grab the figure, plead for more time, but the green light dimmed. His body was numb and heavy. His breaths steadied and slowed._

 _It was cold again._

* * *

Stiles had a head start but by the time they got to the door of the house Derek was in the lead and powered through the kitchen in two long strides. Melissa screamed and scolded as Stiles knocked over the ironing board but stopped at the urgent look on the boy's face. Derek was thundering up the stairs while Stiles grabbed a mirror from the wall and Melissa's wooden baseball bat from its 'hiding place'. He held the mirror like a shield and the bat like a sword and stumbled up the stairs, all the way to Scott's room.

Melissa called after them, unable to climb the stairs half as fast as her son's best friend, even when he wasn't in a hurry, but Derek was already at Scott's door. He shouldered the door open and then gasped.

His eyes were wide and his face was lit with a green light. He hit the floorboards in a dead faint.

"I've got mountain ash!" Stiles roared as he flung himself before Derek's still body, like a puppet with half it's strings cut.

Stiles' threat dried and set into a lump in his throat as he peered over the top of the mirror. He went pale and joined Derek on the floor, unconscious. Melissa's screams the last thing he heard.

His hair was tickling his nose. How was that? His hair had grown, but not _that_ much. He lifted a hand to brush it away but another hand got there first. He frowned and cracked his eyes open. Lydia was stroking his hair while the ends of her own vibrant mane caught on his eyelashes.

Stiles tried to blow her hair away just as she smiled down at him with worried relief.

"Hey, you sleep like a baby and wake up like a disgruntled old dog."

"Did you just call me an old dog?" Stiles muttered as he blinked and rolled over onto his side, and fell off the side of the couch.

He landed with a thump on the familiar rug of the living room at the McCall's. He remembered. His eyes widened, he sat up, and looked around with urgency. Lydia had to jolt backwards to keep from being knocked out by Stiles' accidental head butt.

"Scott!" Stiles blurted.

At the same moment Derek tripped into the living room and searched for Stiles, finding him sitting up on the floor.

"Stiles!"

They both made a bolt back for the stairs but Lydia and Kira, who appeared from nowhere, braced themselves against Stiles' chest as Argent and the Sheriff clamped their arms tight around Derek's biceps.

"He's gone," Melissa said, voice shaky, "he was gone when I got there. You two were both unconscious."

Stiles looked to Derek, and he nodded to confirm the story.

"But Dad..." Stiles began as the Sheriff straightened up and adopted that voice he uses when he's delivering an _'I'm disappointed and you're grounded'_ speech, or arresting somebody.

"Parish and Cordova are on the case. They're in his room right now, investigating. I'm off the case because you're family. I've done everything you want to do. I've said everything you want to say. I've shouted at everyone you want to shout at. Sit down."

Stiles dropped back into his seat, dumbly. Lydia sat beside him and rubbed his back. The Sheriff glanced over at Derek, who was finally being released by Argent.

"I _have_ told them I'm questioning you two."

"He swore and everything," Kira said with a mixture of awe and outrage. "He said the 'F' word!"

"Fanglemcmangledandrum?" Stiles asked before pushing his way over to Derek. "Did you see it? Did you see what it was?"

"I just said I was questioning them, right?" The Sheriff turned to Lydia as he huffed, flinging his arms in exasperation.

Derek thought for a moment.

"Did it do something to you? Was it a person? What was the green light?" Stiles kept on pushing for Derek to pick up one of the lines he was throwing to him.

"Derek, from the beginning," The Sheriff said, firmly,

"You went out to talk to Stiles. You'd seen Scott in his room, in bed, and given him some remedy."

"It was just a hot toddy kinda thing with some healing herbs in there too." Derek assured him. "It was the Wolfsbane, he just had mild Wolfsbane poisoning and everyone was fussing."

Melissa made a clicking sound with her tongue.

"It's a family remedy." Derek mumbled.

"So you and Stiles are outside, talking, you see something," the Sheriff prompted. "What then?"

"Green light," Stiles said, nodding as he remembered.

"Coming from his window," Derek added.

"And?"

"We both ran," Stiles said, looking back to Derek, "you got there first, opened the door, and…down you went. It was like you got Kanima-ed."

"What did you see, Stiles?" The Sheriff said as he sat him down beside him and leaned forward to examine his son's face.

Stiles thought for a while.

"You remember running up the stairs?" Lydia asked him.

Stiles nodded.

"You remember Derek kicking open the door?"

"Shoulder, he shouldered it open," Stiles muttered, concentrating.

"Do you remember going inside?" The Sheriff asked, hands gripping his son's knee tightly.

Stiles tried to focus on the very next thing he remembered after the door opened. He almost spoke but it came out as a half cough, half grunt.

His dad gave him a tight smile and a nod of encouragement. He took in a deep breath and let it out.

"You saw something, I remember the look on your face," Stiles croaked as he looked up at Derek, anxiously.

"He's asking what _you_ saw," Derek said, jaw clenching.

Stiles closed his eyes, took another breath and tried to find anything in his memory between stumbling through the door and waking up on the sofa.

Lydia's hand slid up his back, her fingers stopped at the base of his neck, and she leaned in to whisper into his ear.

"Say the first thing, the only thing, you can see or hear or feel or think of, okay? You're up the stairs, you're almost at the door, you're inside, and…"

"Argent," Stiles croaked, opening his eyes.

"What?" Argent stepped forward.

"What?" Stiles looked confused.

"What did you want?"

"Huh?"

"You just asked for me. You just said my name."

"No, you…" Stiles paused to think again and then shook his head. "No."

"Stiles," Lydia pulled his attention back to her and kept her patient, even tone, "you went into Scott's bedroom and you remember that Derek was with you."

"Yeah," Stiles nodded, confidently. "He was right in front of me."

"Inside the bedroom?" Lydia pressed on.

Parish stopped halfway down the stairs and looked at the Sheriff.

"This is you questioning them?" Parish glanced up the stairs to see if Cordova was in earshot.

"Did you expect anything else?" The Sheriff said as he sighed.

"Derek _was_ inside the bedroom," Stiles said, concentrating as hard as he could.

"I was," Derek said, nodding.

"Okay, Stiles," the Sheriff decided to get control of the witness statements again, "you saw Derek shoulder the door open and go inside."

"Yeah," Stiles nodded.

"And what did you see happen to him?"

"Green light, he looked… He…" Stiles shook his head, blinking rapidly.

"Was he looking at something?"

Stiles nodded, firmly.

"He saw something and then he hit the floor," Stiles clicked his fingers, "gone."

"Did something hit him?" The Sheriff shuffled forward.

Derek was just as intrigued and leaned closer.

"Nothing, nobody, there was nothing. He just saw something and dropped like a stone." Stiles actually shuddered.

"I held up a mirror as I came through the door, at the light, before I'd even got inside. Just trying to stop whatever it was that got Derek…" Stiles concentrated as hard as he could and then huffed, "…Derek. Dead."

Stiles shuddered and then straightened up as he looked at Derek.

"I remember thinking you were dead. Not you, I saw you and then..."

Derek shifted, stiffly, not knowing if he should reassure Stiles or simply stay out of the way because he was uncomfortable and he'd pick up on that.

"I looked over the top of the mirror and..." Stiles struggled to focus, then shook his head and tried to find the memory in his head, eyes searching the space before him and squinting. "Dead. My fault. Dead. _Dead._ "

Melissa couldn't take it any more and left the room, sniffing.

The Sheriff followed her, glancing back at his son and seeing Argent was moving in to push a glass of water into his hand, while Lydia slipped away with Derek and Kira.

"Can you do that claws in the back of the neck thing and see his memories?" Lydia asked Derek.

"Isn't that dangerous," Kira sounded wary, "and isn't it supposed to be an Alpha who does that?"

"Peter's done it as a beta before, I'm sure he'd…" Derek began.

"NO!" Lydia snapped. "No Peter, no Peter sticking his claws into Stiles, and no Peter getting into Stiles' head. I believe you," she said to Derek, then turning to Kira and pausing to compose herself, "I believe that their memories fused out as soon as they encountered whatever it was that took Scott."

"Fused out?" Kira found herself looking at her hands, it was a thing she seemed to do whenever electricity came up.

"What if Stiles and Derek saw something that was too much, too much for their brains emotionally or on a supernatural level, and they had to shut down to protect themselves. Mentally or physically they had to switch off to keep from…"

"Exploding?"

"Metaphorically, yes." Lydia nodded. "They had to go mad or reset and have the damaging aspect erased all together."

"Stiles looked as if he was about to say something but didn't know where to start," Kira added.

"Or even what it was." Lydia nodded. "I think he's sure he saw something and has the words on the tip of his tongue but it's just not there when he tries to say it."

They all looked over to Stiles and saw that Argent was crouching opposite him and talking very low, even Stiles had to lean in close to hear. Stiles frowned and shook his head.

"What the hell?" Derek snapped and pulled Argent away from Stiles. "You think this is Gerard?"

"What?" Lydia had no idea where Gerard's name had come from.

Argent held up his hands and appeared to be resigned to having a Hale right in his face.

"I'm trying to find out why Stiles said my family name when he was the closest to remembering. I know I wasn't in that room. My wife, my daughter, my sister...all dead. Who else might he be remembering?"

"Gerard should be dead. How is he walking around? How is he allowed to be?" Derek growled.

"He's not walking around," Argent said, "I assure you."

"So how did he do this?" Derek was fighting not to rough Argent up.

"I'm not saying he did. I'm saying that Stiles randomly said our name and then forgot he said it. Why don't you think, Derek? Why not focus on what you saw and tell me where the name Argent comes into it?"

The Sheriff came in and forced a time out between the two men. Stiles eyes flicked between them, before his father pulled him out of his seat and started talking about getting him checked out at the hospital.

"Dad this wasn't medical, I don't need probing."

Lydia arched an eyebrow and Kira looked uncomfortable.

"You were unconscious, you're getting medical attention," the Sheriff insisted.

"Melissa can take a look at me right here," Stiles gestured as his best friend's mother appeared, eyes puffy.

As she sniffed and nodded, the Sheriff began guiding Stiles toward the door.

"Melissa has other priorities right now."

"So do you!" Stiles tried to flail out from under the arm his father had around his shoulders. "You have an investigation, missing person, right?"

"We need to find Scott," Derek said, making his way toward the stairs to go back to the bedroom.

"Finding Scott is dependent on you and Stiles remembering what happened when you went into that room," Argent joined in, a strong competitor in the 'stern adult' championship going on.

"We need to find Scott," Melissa said, as she began counting off on her fingers. "We need to make sure Stiles and Derek are okay after whatever happened to them. We need to get them to remember. We need to get the police out of my house before the supernatural is exposed as a real thing. We need to cover up the supernatural in general. Have I missed anything?"

"There's so many components to concern myself with I've got prioritising guilt," Lydia said.

"Exactly what I was thinking," Stiles groaned, "only with shorter words and more swearing."

* * *

Stiles stood just inside the door to Scott's room.

He tried to think back to the moment he looked over the edge of the mirror. Had he seen Scott? Was Scott still there or already gone? Was it a thing or a person like a shape-shifter, or was it something the faded in and out of reality like the Oni?

Green light.

He needed the bestiary. He needed Adderall.

He took out his phone and started snapping pictures. He was on his knees, balancing on one elbow, as he took pictures from a low angle 'to give himself a different perspective' when Lydia came in.

"I'm driving you home."

"I've got my Jeep outside," Stiles replied, distractedly, as he took some flash photos under the bed.

"Just borrow the porn, Stiles!" Lydia huffed. "Come on, I'm not waiting and you're not driving after blacking out."

Stiles fumbled in his pocket, withdrew his keys, and thrust them in the general direction of Lydia.

"Here, I'll walk. It's not far."

"You're going home now. You're going home with me, in my car. You're getting some sleep and not pulling an all-nighter in front of the computer."

"Lydia, Scott's missing. He's gone!"

"Something happened to you too. You don't have super powers. You don't heal like Derek. You're going home. I promised your dad."

"I'll tell him you did what you promised," Stiles winked at her, then ran his hands over Scott's bed, and lifted the sheet to look under it.

"What are you looking for?" Lydia took a step closer, fighting her instinct to join in with the hunt.

"A werewolf, there was one right here and I mislayed him."

"What clues do you think you'll find, Stiles?" Lydia was about to dig her heels in on the whole dragging him away thing, and Lydia had scary heels.

"I don't know, okay!" Stiles snapped at her and she startled, before looking back at him as if he pinned a target on his ass just for her.

Stiles cringed and held up both hands, before turning back to the bed and exhaling so deeply it looked like his whole body was deflating. Two arms curled around his waist from behind and he tensed at this un-Lydia-like behaviour, before seeing her step into his eyeline with her arms folded.

"I want to find him too," Kira said into his back, "I want to find him now. I want to look everywhere and keep looking."

He relaxed a little, though this kind of intimacy was still new for them, so there was still some awkward tension there. Kira gave another squeeze and rested her head between his shoulder-blades. That, Stiles was sure, had to be as comfortable as a pillowcase stuffed with his lacrosse equipment.

"The thing is, when we get him back, I want to be able to tell him I took care of his best friend while he was away."

Stiles slumped and Lydia smirked.

"You know he worries about you," Kira said with a sigh. "and when he gets the whole story of how you saved the day while not flunking a single test at school, I can tell him how I saved the day by making you eat, sleep, medicate properly...stop. Scott would want me to make you stop and rest."

"Our priority right now is looking after the people who are still here," Lydia said, unfolding her arms and stepping closer.

"He's not dead." Stiles shook his head firmly.

"No, I didn't mean…"

"I know he's not dead, I just do." Stiles shrugged Kira off and took a couple of strides over to the window to check it, inconsequentially. "I know he's not dead because she wouldn't do that and that's not even why I'm worried. I think that I maybe could be the reason this happened and I'll fix it. If it was me I'll fix it, because it wasn't a bad thing I was trying to do, but it was me and I'm not as clever as you," he flailed an arm towards Lydia, "or a mysterious Druid like Deaton, but I can get mountain ash to work and do stuff as a human that helps. Frankly I blame the Nemeton."

"Stiles," Lydia grabbed his wrist as it flailed about and stared hard into his eyes, "you know he's not dead because _s_ _he_ wouldn't do that."

Stiles blinked and stared at Lydia as if she'd gone mad.

"What? Who?"

"That's what I'm asking you," she said, gripping tighter as if physically holding onto the thread of memory that Stiles had plucked that 'she' from."

"Lydia, what are you talking about?"

"You said 'she', in the middle of that explosion of babble, the end of which I will definitely be getting back to by the way, you said 'she wouldn't do that'. Who's she?"

"Who's who?" Stiles looked bewildered. "I… What?"

"You said you were sure Scott wasn't dead," Lydia was growing fiercely intense by this point, " _because she wouldn't do that._ That's what you said. Where did that come from?"

Stiles thought back and shook his head.

"I don't know. Did I say she?"

"You said she, not he or it or they, _s_ _he_."

Stiles thought as hard as he could, Lydia suddenly realised that she was cutting off the circulation to his hand and let him go.

Kira approached but Lydia couldn't tear her eyes away from Stiles. She couldn't speak up to tell Kira to keep quiet, that would sever the spider web thin connection to this memory Stiles was trying to follow. She willed her to hover in the background and stay quiet.

"What is it?" Kira said, wide eyed.

Lydia's shoulders fell and Stiles blinked and then shook his head as his frown deepened

"Come on," she beckoned him with one hand extended, "time to go home."

"I nearly got it," Stiles muttered as he dropped his hand into Lydia's and let himself be led out of the room.

"It'll still be there, waiting for you to get it, tomorrow." Lydia spoke with a softer, kinder tone than usual. This convinced Stiles he actually must look really tired.

"You bring me closer to remembering," he paused to glance back into the room before it was completely out of sight, "you should do more talking tomorrow."

"Derek too," Kira added, eagerly, "he was there and even though Derek couldn't bring any of his own memories back, talking through what happened with Derek seemed to help Stiles."

Stiles stopped walking and looked at Kira, giving her a half smile, and she tilted her head to one side in curiosity.

"You help too, y'know?" Stiles told her. "We're gonna get him back together."

* * *

The Sheriff came home from a long night shift, made longer by having to fake a thorough investigation into Scott's disappearance while knowing it was all a waste of time and police resources, and paused outside Stiles' bedroom door.

It was a thing he did before leaving for and coming home from every shift, he'd look in on Stiles. He tended to look in on him and despair. His boy would either be wired and in a flurry of activity when he should be sound asleep , or he'd be slumped in an uncomfortable looking position and impossible to rouse for school.

This time he was undressed, under the covers, and fast asleep. He was also being aggressively spooned by a fully clothed Lydia Martin, who was on top of the covers, with a leg and an arm clamped over his body. She had managed to fall asleep like that.

"Oh boy," he sighed to himself and dragged a hand over his weary face.

"Mr Sherinskiff!" Kira blurted as she jerked upright in the desk chair he'd failed to notice her slumped in. "Stilinski, Mr Sheriff."

"Morning Kira."

Kira gave an out of place beaming smile and one of her awkward waves. She reminded him of Stiles so much at times, he wondered why they'd never ended up clicking like she had with Scott. Then he realised that this meant Scott had paired off with a female version of his son. Scott really does go for the least healthy relationship every time, doesn't he?

"This is..." The Sheriff began, waving a hand at his son's bed and it's two occupants, "...what is this?"

"We're making him rest," Kira said, again far too brightly for the situation and the time of day, "and not be able to wake up and sneak out. He's naked."

Kira's cheerful mask slipped and she looked very embarrassed.

"We made him go to bed without clothes, we didn't look, and then Lydia slept on top of the covers...because...naked."

"Okay," he said, just managing to keep up with the logic.

"I hid all his clothes," Kira said, proudly, before shrugging. "Well, no I didn't. I took them all and put them in your washer. So they're clean and not in here for him to get dressed and run off investigating. They're wet too, he wouldn't have been able to find them and put them on because...ew."

"He could have put something of mine on," the Sheriff said.

Kira blinked.

"Oh yeah."

Something caught the Sheriff's eye, but he held his gaze on Kira.

"You could have slept in my bed, instead of crippling yourself in that tortuous thing."

"It's okay, it's ergonomic."

"That's a fancy way of saying uncomfortable."

"I'll buy you one for your office," Stiles said, muffled into his pillow.

"Ah, you're up, just in time to receive your guest," the Sheriff said, clapping his hands together and rubbing them.

"Guest? Wait, why are you smug? What have you done to be so smug?" Stiles sat up in bed. "Scott! You found him?"

"No, no Scott. But there is a grown man outside your bedroom window who thinks he's stealthy," the Sheriff nodded towards a sheepish-looking Derek Hale.

Stiles shimmied out of Lydia's loosening grip and flung back the covers, before yelping and pulling them back.

"Whoa! No pants. That's a whole lot of no pants on me there."

Kira sprang to her feet.

"I'll grab you some... Oh."

The Sheriff groaned and put an arm around her to guide her to his bedroom.

"Get him something of mine to wear. I'll put everything in the drier before it forms mould, and everybody in the kitchen for breakfast in five minutes. Derek, I have a front door, get down and use it, you moron."

After much mocking of Stiles for looking like a little kid in his dad's clothes; ' _They're baggy because you need to lose weight, old man, put that butter down!_ '; and enough teasing about Derek learning how to use doors, the Sheriff went to bed and everybody else put their heads together.

They were going over everything that happened in Scott's bedroom before they managed to drag Stiles back home. Derek hadn't been there for the 'she' revelation.

"Okay," Lydia said, "let's get to that stuff you were saying about how it might have been you who caused this and you can fix it."

Derek's eyes widened and he gaped at Stiles.

"Oh, right, yeah," Stiles said as he rubbed at the back of his head, as if the look had been a swat of the hand, "so I thought about something I'd done, after I woke up. Woke up at Scott's house, not this morning. And I didn't do it after I woke up, I thought about it after I woke up. I did it before all this and didn't think about it until after I woke up…when I thought about it."

"Oh crap," Lydia slumped in her chair.

When Stiles starts babbling all hope is lost.

"What did you do?" Derek's voice was a low rumble.

"So, I was reading some of Deaton's super secret books, the ones he doesn't think we know about, and th-"

"Why?" Derek snapped, eager to get to the 'what Stiles did to screw everything up' part.

"Because that guy's super shady," Stiles said, appealing to Derek to corroborate his opinion of the vet. "Come on, who's not with me on that? Scott, Scott is the only one who thinks he craps ice cream sundaes and fixes the broken wings of fairies. He's not the doctor in Tinkerbell hospital, he's the guy who fitted the hook on Captain Hook!"

"I _love_ Peter Pan!" Kira sighed.

"Is the JM Barrie stuff for a reason or just random Stiles?" Lydia was genuinely curious. One day she planned to write a study of Stiles' mind. It wouldn't be called 'a beautiful mind' , it'd have to be something like 'who the hell is driving this thing?'

"Deaton disappears into the shadows when the fighting starts and reappears weeks later to tell you something you could have done with knowing before the fight even started. Oh, I'm a Druid, never thought it was important before. Yeah, I was the Hale emissary, didn't think to bring that up when Derek came back into town and had questions for me. Mountain ash can trap werewolves or keep them out, but I'll tell nobody until there's a _really_ high body count! I won't tell anybody I know all about werewolves until after Scott gets shot by hunters, not when he's first turned and struggling with control issues. Nah, let him think he's killed a bus driver. Let him run, out of control, through the woods on his first full moon."

"STILES!" Derek banged his hand on the kitchen table to snap him out of his rant. "We all agree, Deaton's useless, now what did you do?"

"I read all his books!" Stiles blurted.

Lydia's eyes widened and she leaned in toward Stiles, anxiously.

"Did you..?"

Stiles looked her in the eye and they shared a knowledge-gasm.

"I photocopied them, scanned them all onto my computer, and made them into ebooks. They're on Dropbox, I'll send you the link to the folder."

Lydia found herself reaching across the table and clutching his hand.

"Did you take those pills?" Derek was resigned to never getting to the point. "You need those pills that make you think properly."

"I just woke up and came straight down for breakfast," Stiles said with a huff, "no I haven't taken my Adderall."

"Do you need it to focus?" Derek asked through clenched teeth.

"If you just listen I can finish!" Stiles flung his arms in a wild flail that almost caught Kira across the face.

"Get his pills," Derek said as his chair scraped on the kitchen floor, "I'll hold him down."

Derek grabbed Stiles from behind, pinning his arms to his sides, and looked thoroughly put out. Not as much as Stiles did. Kira excused herself to run to Stiles' room and look for his meds.

"I found this thing in the books and I've used mountain ash and I can get stuff to work and I thought I could get this to work. It's always worth a try, right? Helping is worth a try and if it doesn't work it doesn't help but it also doesn't hurt. That's what I thought but it may have hurt if it's what's happened to Scott. If it's the cause of what's happened to Scott. If I caused what's happened to Scott. See, I can totally do this without my pills as long as you guys stop interrupting."

"Coffee?" Lydia smiled, brightly as she poured a cup for Stiles.

Stiles tried to take the cup, but was stilled pinned by Derek's hold. He could only move his arms at the elbow and looked a little like a penguin. Lydia held the cup to his lips and Stiles slurped some coffee down.

"Coffee, really?" Derek arched a eyebrow. " _This_ really needs coffee?"

"Coffee, amphetamine, why put your faith in one over the other?" Lydia out arched his eyebrow with her own.

Stiles looked from one of them to the other, both his eyebrows rising high. When Kira returned she looked a little alarmed by this eyebrow gymnastics display.

"Um, I found pills," she said shaking the bottle.

"There was a thing you could do that helped healing, and could effect humans and supernatural creatures without healing abilities," Stiles suddenly began, as if he wasn't being forcibly restrained by a werewolf. "It could expidiate werewolf healing too, and help with things that werewolves have trouble healing. It didn't say Wolfsbane poisoning but considering that's a major thing a werewolf would have trouble healing from I assumed that covered it."

"Assumption is..." Lydia began.

"The mother of all fuck ups, yes, I know." Stiles said, slumping as Derek released his hold and stepped back to listen to the explanation he'd finally squeezed out of him.

"When was this, right after Scott got poisoned?" Kira sat beside Lydia, her hands making lose fists on the table.

"No, before, like a month ago." Stiles waved away her concern that he'd intentionally caused Scott harm.

"Remember that rant about Deaton not telling important stuff until way after the fact?" Derek folded his arms across his chest and rolled his eyes.

"Like I said, I'm just a human and have no clue if I can get stuff from the books to even work," Stiles, tried not to snap, but was visibly tense. "I assumed it didn't work. I mean, that week Kira got hurt and went back to Scott's place and nothing happened. You were still hurt the next day and he made a big fuss over you and you wouldn't let him take your pain. Remember that whole nurse/patient thing you two had going on?"

Kira's loose fists balled tighter and rose up to her face, where she cringed and hid behind them.

"Kira?" Lydia looked like she already knew the source of Kira's distress.

"He was being so sweet about my cracked ribs," Kira, whined, "and they healed before we even got to his house, but he was making a fuss and taking care of me. I...was enjoying it."

"So you _weren't_ hurt when you walked back into Scott's house?" Stiles was already putting this new information into his timeline.

"Why are you talking about Scott's house in particular?" Derek picked up on the same thing Lydia had, but she felt she knew the reason. "Did you limit the healing...whatever it is to the house? Why?"

"The book said you had to have boundaries." Stiles explained. "There had to be a control so...I don't know...so stuff like vaccinations weren't 'cured' and the kid could still get measles. Maybe so there was a place for the healing to focus, rather than spreading outwards and outwards and trying to heal the world, like a supernatural Michael Jackson song."

"I love that song," Kira whispered to herself.

"Scott's place is lined with mountain ash," Stiles continued, "I thought if anyone got hurt or sick we take them to the McCall's, Melissa would be there for instant gratification...Oh I did NOT mean to say that." Stiles stared into space, horrified.

Lydia opened the pill bottle, tipped a pill onto her open palm and offered it to Stiles, who gulped it down and then washed it down with more coffee. Clearly still mortified at his own choice of phrase.

"Triage," Stiles said after gulping the last of the coffee, "Scott's mom can do triage and get to work on whoever needs immediate help. The extra healing mojo can do the background work for everybody in the house and fix us all up while she's sewing an arm back on or something."

"Sewing an arm...Stiles, where do you get these extreme scenario's from?" Lydia exclaimed.

Stiles pointedly looked at Derek, over his shoulder.

"Oh I don't know, it's as if _somebody_ planted the horrific image of a severed arm into my imagination at a young age, huh Derek?"

"Wait, the mountain ash seal at the house is always broken, otherwise Scott can't get in or out." Kira frowned.

"I know, the plan was to make a seal when everybody in need of attention was in the house."

Lydia side-eyed Stiles.

"Did you make the connection when Kira went in there with her fake cracked ribs?"

Kira cringed again. Stiles nodded.

"And nothing happened," he said, glancing at Kira, "she seemed to not feel any better so I assumed it didn't work."

"I'm sorry," Kira whined.

"No," Derek said, firmly, "this was not _your_ fault."

"Yeah, trying to help everybody heal faster, what an asshole!" Stiles huffed.

"There's no seal over the door now," Lydia pondered aloud, "so what if the healing spell, are we calling it a spell?"

"Voodoo," Stiles offered.

"Charm?" Kira made her contribution.

"What if it's still going out further, looking for more healing to do?" Lydia concluded. "If we complete the line of mountain ash at the house, would Scott's healing be completed? Would he be returned?"

"It's the only idea we have," Stiles said with a shrug, "and it's Lydia's idea, therefore could work perfectly with no dire consequences."

All four of them nodded and Stiles raided his stash of mountain ash. Well, he raided the stash of all kinds of druid stuff in jars he appropriated from Deaton's secret pantry of shady. Them and they're awesome teamwork had solved the mystery and saved the day.

The line formed, Derek tested it and couldn't pass, and they all held their breath and waited.

After an uncomfortably long wait for somebody with ADHD, Stiles charged up to Scott's bedroom to see if he had reappeared in his bed, fast asleep.

No Scott.

No difference.

No solution.

"So it wasn't it," Stiles said, despondently, "it wasn't the healing thing after all.

"Unless we shut it out?" Kira suggested.

"No, it's like cutting the source of oxygen from a fire," Lydia said, having downloaded the e-books, found the process Stiles had followed, and read up on everything there was about it and how it should work. "No matter how much the fire has spread, take away the thing that feeds it and it dies out.

"So not my fault after all," Stiles said, downhearted.

It was all they had to go on and it had been a non-starter.

"It was _her_ fault," Derek said, ominously. "We just need to find out who she is."


	3. Delayed Gratification

**Delayed Gratification**

"Heeeey, Daddio!"

"Oh crap," the Sheriff rubbed his hand over his face, roughly, in preparation for the new worry lines his son was sure to be putting there during the next few minutes.

"Is that a-what-a-way to be talking to your biddy baby boy?" Stiles slurred.

"Are you drunk or drugged?" The Sheriff asked, already dreading the answer.

"I'm on Oxycodone!"

His shoulders sagged.

"And why is that, son?"

"I broke my ankle...a bit...it's a bit broke...I broke a bit of it."

"Stiles!"

"Dad? Hi dad!"

"Hi Stiles. So, I hear you broke your ankle. That sucks."

"Ugh, sure does," Stiles grunted, "and I have to have this boot thing on for six weeks at least."

"Is it plaster or a walking cast?"

"It's a big clunky boot," Stiles grumbled, "but I can take it off to wash, so there won't be that ants in the cast thing I had with my arm."

"Don't remind me."

"So, hey dad?" Stiles was all over the place, more than usual.

"Yeah?"

"I can't do the stuff for work, the physical stuff, and the people in the office signed...like a petition for me not have a desk job for the six weeks. So they're making me go home."

"Okay, that's good Stiles," the Sheriff said, his voice placatory and indulgent, "do you want me to book a flight?"

"Leave it all to Lybia," Stiles said, distractedly, just before the sound of alarms drowned him out.

"Lybia? Oh God, what buttons did you push, Stiles?"

The alarms stopped, abruptly, and a voice was scolding Stiles for unplugging something.

"Do you mean Lydia?" The Sheriff said, when the sounds had died down. "Please don't be calling me from a hospital in Lybia."

"I'm in DC, dad, remember?" Stiles was now talking to his father as if it were him who needed hand-holding through the conversation.

A tired voice in the background mumbled something.

"Really? Huh," Stiles responded, before addressing his father once more, "I'm in Baltimore, dad, remember?"

"Do I need to arrange a flight and transport to and from the airport for you?" He spoke slowly and clearly in the hope that it'd get through this time.

"Lydia's gonna drive down and fly back with me, or up. Am I up or down?" Stiles sounded distracted.

"You okay, son? It was just the ankle you hurt, right?"

"Uh-huh, broke my foot. Hey dad. Did you change your passwords?"

"Yes I did and stop hacking into my accounts!"

"It's not hacking if you just use the same cycle of passwords with different capitalisation and a dollar sign instead of the letter 's'."

"Stay out of my accounts, which one are you trying to get into, anyway?"

"None of your business," Stiles grunted.

"My business, Stiles, literally _my_ business!"

Stiles cleared his throat and the line sounded different, like an echo.

"You want anything from the airport, or the hospital gift shop, or anything I can steal from the cab over?"

"No, I'm fine, just you in one piece will be fine."

"The ankle didn't break all the way through, so I'm technically still one piece...apart from the foot bone, that broke all the way but it's inside my foot with all the other foot bones to look after it. So many bones, so many pieces. Does one vertebra count as one piece or does your whole spine count as one piece?"

"Stiles?"

"Agh! Fucking speaker-phone, how d'you do that?" Stiles grumbled before the sound on the line was back to normal. "Yeah dad?"

"Drink some water, eat what they give you, go to sleep and do everything Lydia says when she says it, okay?"

"Okay."

"I'll see you soon."

"Does your cheek activate the speaker-phone while you're talking? Mine always does. And hold, I put people on hold and don't know until I get call waiting and it's them calling me again!"

"Stiles?"

"Rambling?"

"Yes."

"Sorry."

"Let me know flight times, tell Lydia to let me know."

"I will."

"Sleep those drugs off, son."

Stiles snorted with laughter, brightly.

"I'm on Oxycodone!"

"I know," his dad said, sighing deeply.

* * *

Derek stared at the text from Kira.

Stiles was coming home, Lydia coming with him, Kira saw Facebook talk of everything and told Lydia to pick her up on the way through New York and she'd come back to Beacon Hills too.

He knew what that was about. Every time Stiles and Lydia came home the 'What happened to Scott McCall' case reopened. Kira obviously wanted to get in on this one, as her family were with her in New York, so she had nobody to come back to.

He knew Stiles was coming home to recover from an injury, but nothing was specified, so he had to contact the Sheriff to find out that it was a broken ankle. That gave Derek something to do until they all crashed back into town. He needed to fix the elevator in his building, after putting it off for weeks, to spare Stiles from the stairs.

Because Stiles would show up. He always shows up. Even if he's not home Stiles shows up, gets in, disturbs things and leaves an illegible note before leaving.

Fix the elevator, which he was sure was just a matter of broken glass fragments keeping the doors from gliding shut. He still gives one of his 'looks' to the tenant on the lower floor, who claimed they'd broken no glass anywhere and that he was remembering them moving in with a huge glass topped table incorrectly.

They knew he knew they were lying.

Maybe he'd ask Stiles for a subtle but obvious way to get back at them. Stiles was great for subtle but obvious.

" _Dude, I will give you the ultimate master-class on passive aggressiveness," Stiles said with his usual degree of animation. "Because you have the aggressive down, A+ for aggressiveness, but with my teachings you can be an even bigger asshole with a quarter of the effort."_

Stiles had been directionless after Scott had vanished. He always needed a project or a mystery to solve, between returning to the mystery of what happened to Scott.

The Sheriff had insisted on Stiles going to college as far away from Beacon Hills as he could get, just to get him to let the case close for himself as it had been for the police and Scott's mother for over a year.

Derek thought of Melissa. He would fix the elevator, scowl at the tenant who broke the glass table top and thought sweeping the fragments down the elevator shaft constituted cleaning it up, and then pick up a decent lunch for her at the hospital.

He could see if she knew they were coming back. She probably knew before he did, but he needed to know that she needed no warning that Hurricane Stilinski was about to tear through her old house again.

Melissa hadn't wanted to live there alone after Scott was officially given up on. Officially meaning the officials gave up, obviously those in the know still had hope that something could be done. Melissa seemed to have convinced herself that Scott was in some supernatural parallel universe and doing okay. Stiles indulged her with a Quantum Leap fantasy he'd thought too hard about.

Derek had failed to grimace down his smile as Stiles and Lydia had created a whole 'fanfiction' over Melissa's mother's Day dinner. They managed to turn every encounter she had for the day into 'Scott in somebody else's body, saving lives and changing history for the better, but still popping in to see his mom on Mother's Day.

They were so funny that it didn't even make her cry.

After Stiles had gone into a frenzy of arm flapping, as he cast Scott as the nearby heavily pregnant woman, and then went into a scene-by-scene rerun of the episode of Quantum Leap that put the other Scott (Bakula) into the same situation.

Derek wondered how he'd even come to be there for times like that. Why was he part of Melissa McCall's Mother's Day dinner? Why did he have Thanksgiving with the Sheriff every year? How did Christmas become waking up at Stiles' house, opening presents with him and his father, then going to the Martin house for the rest of the day?

Maybe it was because he helped everybody move with minimal complaints.

He helped Argent put everything into storage before he went back to France. He helped Melissa move into her more affordable one bedroom apartment. He manages her tenants in the house, when she has them.

People must either find out what happened to Scott, or what happens in the town in general, and move on pretty fast.

Then there was the time that couple moved in, doting husband and pregnant wife, and just as the baby was due to arrive...they left. Not the usual way, the Scott McCall way. They both disappeared, all their things were still there. The overnight bag, ready to take to the hospital, the new baby supplies, keys, shoes, phones.

Stiles had come back so fast when he heard about that. He just borrowed a car from a college buddy and drove, cross country. He barely slept during his overnight motel stays and his dad got so mad and worried that Derek flew to middle America, drove Stiles back to the airport, put him on a plane the rest of the way, and drove the piece of crap car back to campus and handed the keys to Stiles' bewildered friend.

He flew home and spent the rest of Stiles' period of 'further investigation' wanting to punch him.

That car would never have made it. It was probably worth less than the gas in the tank. The cost of getting stuck on the road with no car, and all the motel rooms, would have been more than if the idiot had just got a flight to begin with.

But he was a student and money was a thing. Derek threw a credit card into his face just before he put him on the plane home. It was for emergencies, or food, and never ill conceived road trips. Derek hadn't had to pay off anything on it to date. Stiles probably needed money more times than he could keep count but he never once let Derek cover it.

Derek told himself Stiles would probably have preferred to steal a hardly-used credit card from his wallet and use that for a happy meal just to get the toy.

Derek's eyes moved to the black, plastic dragon, sitting on his dash. Stiles had sent it to him, with a note making references he didn't get about having the hiccups and suggesting that Derek's teeth had fallen out. He didn't know why he kept it. He didn't know why he gave it pride of place in his car. All he knew was that Stiles had looked delighted when he saw it.

Derek liked the idea that he looked like he got the joke.

He smirked as he glanced to the cardboard sign on the passenger seat, beside him. He'd hold it up at arrivals with pride. He'd even taken the time to write it in italic.

 _Idiot_

* * *

"Twenty five?"

"What, you don't think I look old enough to have a twenty five year-old son?" The Sheriff said with a twinkle in his eye.

"No, I mean I didn't think twenty five year-olds could be FBI agents."

"Well, the minimum age to become a Special Agent is twenty three, though I have never heard of a twenty three year-old agent." The Sheriff conceded. "The youngest I know of was 25 and was hired for his computer science degree. They hire people with all types of experience but the typical successful candidate is around thirty one with an advanced degree."

"That's your son?"

"No, no, Stiles isn't a Special Agent right now. He's going to be, and sooner than thirty one I'd bet, but he's in the loop. That's as much as I can say."

"You can say how he passed the polygraph test with nothing but lies," Parish chimed in as he leaned through the open door.

The Sheriff looked embarrassed but it melted into pride as he started speaking about it.

"That could have had them thinking he was a psychopath rather than a gifted liar." He paused to shake his head in disbelief. "My son a gifted liar. That was the one thing I had on him, I could always tell a lie from him. I could differentiate between a lie, a half truth and the absolute truth. I guess that's why I got so mad at him when he finally told me about werewolves. I couldn't pick up the lie."

He looked at Satomi, the local alpha, and wondered if he'd handled it better if someone his age... someone who _appeared_ to be his age had been with Stiles to back him up. She'd been a great help to Scott's pack after he'd vanished. They hadn't wanted to replace him, but they'd needed the stability of an alpha and a pack. Even Derek hadn't had an attitude about the surrogate alpha, mostly because she was a connection to his mother and their pack.

"So the FBI want him for his ability to beat a lie detector?" She asked.

"A lie detector is inadmissible in court for a reason. It's more that he demonstrated how they could be beaten. He learned how to lie to werewolves, the machine and the supernatural use pretty much the same criteria for determining if you're lying or not."

"Tell the story about his thesis," Parish came all the way into the office now.

"You're prouder of him than me!" The Sheriff huffed.

"He's impressive, I'm impressed!"

"Okay," Satomi said, "so dazzle me."

"He broke down how the polygraph could be beaten. There's a lot that those in the know who knew about that already," the Sheriff waved a hand to dismiss that part as irrelevant, "but he then demonstrated how to get a reading from somebody who knows how to beat it. He also found a way to differentiate between somebody like him, deliberately lying but being undetected, somebody like a psychopath, and a sociopath."

"He couldn't prove a lie or a truth," Parish interrupted, "but he could determine from the test if it was a certain type of person and then recommend the different avenues the agents could take."

"He's fluent in Polish now," the Sheriff said, with a fondness that softened his whole face. "He used to be able to understand it when relatives were speaking it, but he'd never be able to speak it back to them. He had pronunciation problems and his tenses were off. He also couldn't read or write a word of it. He learned Albanian after that, though I don't think he's fluent in that."

"Impressive," Satomi nodded, remembering how difficult learning a whole new language from scratch could be, "but why focus on language skills?"

"Having languages helps a lot, he thought Polish was cheating because he already knew some," the Sheriff chuckled and rolled his eyes.

"Plus GW offer the classes free of charge," Parish added, now taking a seat.

The Sheriff looked at him and then arched an eyebrow.

"You happy there? Sure you don't want my seat?"

Parish grinned and folded his arms.

"I'm comfortable here, Sheriff.

Satomi sat forward, turning the photo frame on the desk towards her and smiling at the picture of Stiles at his GW graduation.

"Even though they were never actually my pack, I still feel I should know them better," she looked back to the Sheriff. "I thought I was keeping tags on my strays, but I don't really have strays at all do I?"

"They ask after you and your pack," the Sheriff said, his face and tone as firm and sincere as they ever could be. "When we thought those hunters had come to town to cause trouble, they were ready to drop everything and mobilize for you all."

"And every time I encounter one of my...generation," Satomi couldn't help but smile as she spoke, "I present Scott's case to them. There will be somebody old enough to have seen this before. Somebody will have a story or a book, or know of a similar vanishing."

"You know he'll be trying again as soon as he gets back," the Sheriff said, with a mixtures of fondness and sympathy for his son.

"He is a friend of many of our pack on Facebook," Satomi chuckled. "As soon as we knew he was coming back our group was abuzz. As I said, we have nothing new to offer, but we are available to him should he need us."

"You may regret the offer," the Sheriff warned her, "because I won't hesitate to send him to you when he gets frustrated and starts driving me crazy."

"Oh I have a plan, Sheriff, don't worry about that," Satomi reached into her purse and withdrew a book. The cover depicted a man sitting alone in a serene but empty landscape. The title read, _The Evaporated People_.

* * *

It was quite a sight.

Stiles was walking slowly in a heel to toe rocking motion on a black boot, strapped on firmly with Velcro. His other foot, was in a garish neon pink and glittery charcoal sneaker.

Lydia spotted him first, gave one of her smiles...the one that means you'll wish you never got on her radar, and hung back as she lifted her phone in front of her. She was poised to take a picture. Derek realised that his scowling at her doing this played right into her hands.

The shutter sound didn't escape his notice, despite the interference of people at arrivals, and he knew the image would be everywhere within the hour. Cora would probably see it before he did.

Great.

Stiles, hobbling on his mismatched footwear, towards Derek who looked angry enough to destroy...as he held up a hand made sign that read ' _Idiot_ '.

"Derek!" Stiles flung out his arms, almost as if he was going in for the hug, and then thrust his luggage at the glaring wolf, letting it drop to the floor before rocking his way onwards. "Where's the car? What's the car?"

Lydia clip-clopped by, wheeling her compact suitcase behind her, and flipped her hair as she followed Stiles to the exit.

"Missed you Derek," she said, carelessly.

Derek thrust the sign into the chest of the young sap with a cheap bunch of flowers, who stood beside him, and picked up Stiles' bag and dragged his feet after them. He hoped there were revolving doors for Stiles to get trapped and steel grates for Lydia's heels to get stuck in.

There weren't.

 _Smooth floors and automatic doors, dammit._

After much more trouble than it should have been, Derek got Stiles settled in the back seat. Lydia had been no help at all, simply sitting in the passenger seat, fastening her seat belt, and checking her make up was impeccable in the mirror.

"I've been responsible for him up to this point," Lydia had said, "most of that while he was a drugged rag doll, "think yourself lucky and don't ask me for any help."

"I drooled on her pillow," Stiles said, a mischievous smirk curling at one corner of his mouth, "her pillow made from pure Muppet fuzz."

"Chenille," Lydia corrected as she took out her phone and started swiping and tapping at the screen.

Stiles mouthed the word 'Muppet' into Derek's face as he strapped him in. Derek slammed the door, Stiles pretended his leg had been hurt again but neither of his companions batted an eyelid. Stiles fidgeted until he got his own phone from his pocket and soon mirrored Lydia's actions.

"So," Derek said after turning the key in the ignition, "how did you do it?"

"Heroically," Stiles answered, distractedly.

Lydia snorted.

"Hey, when did you take this?" Stiles was now waving his phone, displaying Lydia's photo from the airport beside her head.

"Just before we landed," Lydia huffed and shook her head.

"Oh good, there's two of you now," Derek gripped the steering wheel and clenched his jaw. "Why couldn't you have rubbed off on him, huh? Why the other way around?"

"Nobody's _rubbing off_ on anyone," Lydia said, giving a side-eye that Derek couldn't meet.

Stiles sighed.

"All my rubbing off is done alone in my room...sometimes with the help of a chenille pillow."

"Not funny," Lydia said, tapping one last time at the screen of her phone and then putting it away. "He chased a suspect, barefoot, over cobblestones..."

"Aesthetic cobblestones, not real cobblestones," Stiles interrupted.

" _Barefoot_ , over aesthetic cobblestones, down stone steps, up a metal fire escape, then wrestled and restrained the suspect until somebody with shoes and a car showed up to make the arrest."

"Stole my credit, made the arrest my ass, they stole my credit." Stiles grumbled.

"He was so focused on that part of it, when he got to the front stoop he didn't use it like a normal person, he stepped off it sideways, broke his fifth metatarsal and fractured his lateral malleolus on landing."

"I would have used it like a normal person," Stiles sputtered, "but there was a puppy on it! What was I supposed to do, Lydia, trample the tiny dog?"

"Stop walking? Step over the dog? Move the dog? Try to take a two foot drop as if it was a six inch deep step?"

"That's not the depth, that's the rise," Stiles mumbled, Derek was sure he wasn't the only one who heard him, though. "Seven inches."

"Seven inches in your dreams Stilinski," Lydia said, gazing out of the window and smiling.

"Why were you barefoot?" Derek had to put a stop to that line of bickering immediately.

"I was about to take a shower."

"He was at the gym," Lydia gave the more pertinent information, with a self-satisfied smile.

"Why were you at a gym?" Derek's brow furrowed.

"Because I'm no a werewolf," Stiles said with a shrug, before gesturing to his torso. "This has to be maintained."

Derek slammed on the breaks and turned in his seat to look at Stiles all over.

"This what?"

"This!" Stiles gestured to himself again, clearly taking offence.

"I still don't see it, Stiles."

Stiles flailed his arms toward Derek's face, shooing him back to his job as chauffeur.

"You're not going to see it either. No gun show for you."

"Gun show?" Derek asked Lydia.

"He does have a couple of decent pistols," she conceded with a shrug and a nod.

"Glocks! I'm packing Glocks," Stiles said with pride.

"He has a four pack too," Lydia added.

"How do you know that?" Stiles sat up and blinked at her?

"You get very _free_ when you're on pain meds, sweetie."

Derek pulled away again. Stiles narrowed his eyes and held his phone to his ear, considering Lydia's words and carefree attention to the landscape passing them in a blur, the ringing was loud enough for everyone to hear.

"Is that on speaker-phone?" Derek wondered if his werewolf hearing was heightened somehow.

"No," Stiles said, before looking at the screen and then tapping at it again, the ring tone reducing to the expected level, "yes. What is it with the damn touchscreen?"

"It's your prominent cheekbones, honey," Lydia said with a wave of the hand, "be grateful for a bone structure so good it can operate an iPhone."

Stiles held the phone at a strange angle, so the screen wasn't touching his face but he still had it to his ear.

"You have good bone structure too, you don't have this problem," Stiles huffed.

"I don't press the phone into the side of my face either, it ruins my make up."

"What make up?" Stiles grinned and fluttered his eyelashes, "That's your natural flawless beauty, right? You roll right out of bed looking like that."

Lydia turned her attention to a nauseated looking Derek.

"I've trained him well."

"You always did like a lap dog," Derek said.

"I'll be her bitch twenty four seven," Stiles announced, just as the ring tone stopped and his father's voice answered the call. "Oh, hey dad!"

" _Do I want to know?"_ Derek heard the Sheriff asking.

"Lydia's a goddess and there's no shame in acknowledging it," Stiles proclaimed. "Anyway, we're on our way from the airport. Derek put me in my car seat and everything."

" _Are you going to the house?"_

"Which house?"

" _OUR house!"_

"Well, to drop off the bags and use the bathroom, then thought I'd go ov-"

" _Don't go to the McCall place, Stiles."_

"Why not?"

" _Respect? Maybe talk to Melissa first, exchange pleasantries, sit on the couch and rest your leg? Be a normal person?"_

"This boot is made for walking, pops," Stiles said, tapping the clunky black boot strapped to his leg, "and that's just what I'll do."

" _You wanna take it to Sinatra, Stiles? Well, we'll do it MY WAY."_

"Bang, bang, you shot me down," Stiles said as he slumped in his seat.

" _I've got you under my skin, son, behave. Don't aggravate Derek."_

Derek failed to suppress a growl.

" _Don't aggravate him any more than you already have."_ The Sheriff added.

"We'll go home and order pizza, that's Amore," Stiles said with a lazy sigh.

"That's Dean Martin," Derek muttered.

" _Dean Martin, son, ain't that a kick in the head?"_

"Ugh, Lydia, a little help here?" Stiles appealed to her, still staring, dreamily, out the window.

"I can't hear both sides of the conversation, Stiles," Lydia said, before smirking, "I don't want to go and spoil it all by saying something stupid."

"Right, I'm hanging up, no pizza for old men. Enjoy your Kale and wheat grass, I'll send it to the station with a bran muffin." Stiles cut off his father's protests and tossed his phone beside him.

He folded his arms and tried not to pout.

Lydia's phone started to ring.

"Don't let him bribe you!" Stiles started to warn her.

"It's Kira."

"Kira?" Stiles blinked and shifted in his seat. "She was on the plane with us."

Lydia closed her eyes, pursed her lips tightly and answered her phone.

"We left you at the airport."

" _Some of us had bags to claim!"_ Kira yelped.

"How are you two the brains of any operation?" Derek snapped, stopped the car, turned around and headed back to the airport.

"I'm all foggy from the meds," Stiles blurted out the first excuse he had.

"I was escorting him," Lydia couldn't help but sound guilty, "I thought she was with us."

"Where did you think she was sitting in the car?" Derek's jaw was clenched so tightly they were sure they'd soon hear bones cracking.

"Well...you missed important things too!" Stiles sputtered. "Like you didn't even ask about this monstrosity of a sneaker on my good foot."

"Hey!" Lydia protested.

"Thank you for lending me your sneaker, Lyds," Stiles said with as small an eye roll as he could muster.

"I figured you needed a high shoe to even out your walk with the boot," Derek forced out.

"Oh, well, yeah. That was it."

"Your feet are too big for my shoes," Lydia clicked her tongue and sighed, "I won't be able to fit in that now anyway."

"Don't blame me, I woke up with it on my foot. You made the shoe sacrifice all on your own." Stiles folded his arms across his chest. "For the record, your feet aren't nearly as dainty as you like to think."

Lydia turned on him with a hiss. Stiles gave her an exaggerated hiss back, making air claws with his fingers.

"I don't know why I thought I missed either of you," Derek barked. "I have no idea why I believed you could possibly have grown up and grown out of this crap. I can't believe..."

Stiles phone rang and he help up a finger to silence Derek as he answered it.

"Stilinski."

His cheekbone activated the speaker-phone immediately.

"Sorry," the voice on the other end said, sounding flustered, "I know you're on leave. You're not on the plane are you?"

"No, it's fine, what's up?" Stiles sounded professional and serious.

"It's Slade, he's...not happy that you're not working the Baltimore City Police Department investigation."

"Well," did you tell him I can still be in the loop?"

"We told him you're out, injured, we told him you're getting all the emails and case notes. He's jus... Yes, Mr Slade, I'm just telling him now."

There was a muffled sound and a grunt before a deeper, angrier voice burst from the speaker-phone. Stiles tapped at the screen to switch back and give the illusion of privacy back to the conversation.

" _Stilinski! You there?"_

"Put the keypad on, your cheek will only touch the numbers," Lydia whispered.

Stiles changed the setting on his phone and held it to his head again.

" _What the hell? Did you hang up on me?"_

"I'm here, I'm in the car," Stiles said. "Isaiah, I'm coming back, and they're gonna keep me informed, but I'm on the west coast for a few weeks now."

" _So they move you on before you get the job done? You told me you were shutting this down. You swore!"_

"I am coming back," Stiles was speaking calmly and firmly, the authority in his tone was jarring for Derek, Lydia seemed to be used to it and had dropped her antagonistic facade as soon as the call came in.

" _Weeks, in weeks, you're dropping this ball after all the promises, just like every other one of you guys, every other time."_

"I can't play ball with a broken foot, they won't let me, but I'm not out of the game. Isaiah, please, trust the team. I trust the team."

" _Your team didn't promise me. Your team didn't give me speeches. Your team didn't play me the 'all cops aren't crooked' song on the violin."_

"We are going to nail them," Stiles cut in. "Remember what I told you? You remember me telling you about all the good people I grew up with back home? All the good people killed on the job? Good people killed by white ass holes with superiority complexes? You remember me telling you how scared I get for my dad, for his deputies, who might get killed on the job because of a stereotype that everybody who does their job is dirty?"

" _Yeah, everybody in sleepy-ville home town is a good guy and the bad black men are going to revenge kill them for shit they didn't do. Protect your own and leave us with the same shit, as always. I damn well knew it. I don't know why I listened to you."_

"You listen to me because I told you about the time a dirty cop in my dad's department tried to kill a minor in custody because he was paid off. You listen to me because I tell you we had a deputy who tried to set his partner on fire in their cruiser. That bastard was charged and sent down. They both got charged and sent down. No excuses, no cover-ups, that's what I told you we'd get for you and we will."

" _Not if you ain't here!"_

"I'm not the team, I'm one guy. There are actual field agents, right there for you."

" _And they protect their own, you're the only one I trusted not to sell us out to save the department's ass."_

"Well you're wrong!" Stiles' voice rose a little, but he still had that out of character authority that stunned Derek into silence. "I trust them. I vouch for them. I don't want the good people in that department to get a bad name, and there are good people in that department. They came to us, remember? That's how I found you, the Baltimore City Police Officers who see this shit going on called us and told us to speak to you. I am not the only one on your side, on this case, doing the work. I am so many rungs down this ladder, Isaiah, you seem to think I'm way more important than I actually am."

" _You seem to think you not being around makes no difference," the anger was lost in his voice now. "I'm sorry you got hurt. I want you to go home and heal with your girl. But I'm worried they're gonna shut this down while you're gone."_

"If they were going to do that, they could do it with me there," Stiles said, starting to sound a little tired.

" _You there in person? No way. You can talk, boy, and you don't shut up."_

"And you know now I can talk on the phone just as well. I swear, Isaiah, they will keep me updated. I'll get every note sent to me. I'll be talking to them. I'm not on vacation."

There was silence for a moment.

" _You get shot or something?"_

"I broke my foot and busted up my ankle," Stiles mumbled, "what's with all the big front stoops in your city? Why do your doors need to be up so high anyway?"

" _You fell off a stoop?"_

"There was a dog! I just caught a bad guy."

" _Maybe I do have too much faith in you."_

"You're a charmer, Isaiah. Now talk to the team, they're _my_ team, it's like talking to me only with pauses. You'll get used to it."

There were some friendlier words of goodbye before Stiles ended the call and dragged his hand over his face with a groan.

"All okay?" Lydia asked, watching him in the mirror.

"Yeah." Stiles slouched down in his seat, phone resting on his chest.

They drove the rest of the way in silence, pulled over to let Kira hop in, Derek putting her huge case in the trunk, and headed back out again.

"So Kira," Stiles began, "be honest now, you think Lydia has big feet right?"

"Stiles!" Lydia glared at him again.

"What? That's it? No apology?" Kira was blinking rapidly as she looked from one to the other. "You forgot me and that's just how it is?"

"I didn't forget you, I was just distracted by the size of Lydia's feet, you can understand that, right?"

"I'm going to kill you!" Lydia fumed.

Derek smiled to himself and drove them all the way to the Stilinski house without a single scowl.


	4. The Evaporated People

**The Evaporated People**

Melissa stood in Scott's room, hugging her arms to herself.

It didn't look like his room. It just looked like an ordinary room. Derek had made it look as plain and empty as possible, to attract renters. He said renters like a blank canvass to work with. Scott's stuff was in storage, another thing arranged by Derek.

Derek was actually being an amazing alpha. Red eyes have nothing on a werewolf's actions, in her opinion. If doing a decent thing was deemed as heroic as breaking a circle of mountain ash, the supernatural 'powers that be' would have made him a true alpha for his actions since Scott disappeared alone.

She had come to the house to make sure it was as it should be before Stiles arrived for another routine investigation. It upset her and reassured her every time Stiles reopened the case for himself. The upset came from never being able to move on and let her son go. The reassurance came from knowing there was somebody else who would never give up on him. He never looked at her with the nauseatingly familiar 'sad eyes'. Everyone gave her 'sad eyes'. Stiles hadn't put Scott in the past tense yet, Scott was present, lost, but coming back as far as he was concerned.

Stiles being back home brought a little bit of Scott back for her.

Stiles being back inside the house, looking for clues, drawing symbols on the floors and reciting incantations, bought back the pain of the loss.

She dwelt on Scott's room longer than she should have done. She sealed the mountain ash circle before locking the door. She needed to fuss over Stiles and his injury. She needed to get a hug. She needed to buy him some Reese's Peanut Butter Doughnuts just to see him turn into a kid again.

She was primarily going to give him the keys to the house, that was her excuse, but that was really the least of things on her list of motivations.

Stiles was her surrogate son and the Sheriff was her surrogate partner. The Sheriff was to her what Lydia was to Stiles. As Stiles once said, before high fiving her, 'co-dependent platonic relationships with hot women for the win'.

She got into her car and sat for a moment, wondering what she wanted the outcome of this latest visit to be. Should she hope for progress? Should she wish it was over and for Stiles to give up and close the case for himself, so they could both move on? Maybe, the thing she really wanted was for this to be the same as every other time.

Maybe, what she actually wanted was for nothing to change, for Stiles to come up with nothing new, vow not to give up, then get back to his life. That was what she felt guilty for wanting. She wanted the door to Scott to remain open, but needed to open other doors for herself and keep going forward the way she had been.

She groaned, then growled at herself, guilt was a confusing and frustrating enemy.

She started the car and set off to get Stiles' doughnuts.

Stiles was having a nonsensical argument with Kira over which Disney movie to watch.

Kira kept fighting for one with lots of songs.

"Disney only got good when they followed the Broadway Musical formula!"

Stiles flailed and sputtered and until Lydia gave him a light slap around the back of the head to get him to use his words.

"Only got good? Only got good in the _nineties_? Lady and the Tramp, Kira! Pinocchio? Alice in Wonderland and Winnie the Pooh?"

"You skipped Bambi and Dumbo," Lydia pointed out.

"No dead or estranged mothers, not when I want to function for the rest of the day," Stiles tried to shrug off the moment, but Kira was ready to back down and give him whatever he wanted after that.

Stiles pulled a load of DVDs off the shelf and looked behind them to a hidden second row of childhood goodness.

"Hey, my Rugrats movies!" he said brightly.

"Not Disney," Lydia pointed out.

"Neither is Hanna Barbera but if I found a best of Scooby Doo DVD we'd be watching it," Stiles declared.

"Rugrats in Paris," Kira took the case from Stiles and flipped it over to read the back, a dreamy smile on her face.

"Whole movie about a little boy who doesn't have a mommy..." Lydia said under her breath.

"Oh yeah. Well, the first one?"

Stiles looked at her ruefully.

"You mean the one where Tommy loses his brother and drags his friends around on adventures trying to get him back home?" Stiles broke into a small smile and then winked at Kira so she didn't feel bad.

"Damn Rugrats, why do you have to hurt so much?" Kira frowned at the DVD case in her hands.

"Aha!" Stiles wielded one of the DVD's triumphantly and shuffled on his ass over to the DVD player. "Robin Hood!"

"Oo-De-Lally," Lydia said, sitting back on the couch and putting her feet up on the coffee table.

"Robin Hood?" Kira's face scrunched up. "A cartoon fox and no great musical numbers. Come on, you must have some good stuff there."

"Robin Hood with cartoon foxes is the good stuff," Stiles proclaimed, "Oo-De-Lally, indeed, and take your knock-off Broadway numbers and shove 'em. We got 'Not in Nottingham'!"

"Not in Beacon Hills," Lydia said with a smirk.

It was this whole exchange that led Melissa to arrive at the Stilinski house to see Derek Hale's eyes screaming for help and hear the tuneless harmony from the three 'comeback kids'.

 _ _'Every town__

 _Has its ups and down_

 _Sometimes ups_

 _Outnumber the downs_

 _But not in Beacon Hills_

 _I'm inclined to believe_

 _If we weren't so down_

 _We'd up and leave_

 _We'd up and fly if we had wings for flyin...'_

"Please tell me you're staying," Derek begged, as stoically as a person can beg.

"I was just going to give Stiles the ke-"

" _Please_ tell me you're staying until the Sheriff comes home," Derek repeated, with more intensity.

"I can stay and be praised for bringing doughnuts," Melissa said, holding up the box in her other hand, "if you needed to go som-"

Derek grabbed his jacket and walked out of the house without a word. Melissa shook it off and stepped inside, nudging the door closed with her hip.

"Are those cries of pain? Do you need an ambulance, Stiles?"

"Melissa!" Stiles threw his arms wide, almost knocking Kira's drink out of her hand.

"Hey sweetie, nice boot."

"It's all the rage, I'm thinking about getting one on the other foot to match," Stiles managed to waggle his eyebrows and the toes of his good foot in synchronisation.

"He's joking, but I can see it happening," Melissa said to Lydia, both women sharing their fond despair.

"I see a box of doughnuts," Stiles' eyes widened as he spoke, "are you just a tease or did your bring me doughnuts?"

"A little bit of both," Melissa said with a smile, "I bought you doughnuts but I'm not giving them to you until you promise to take this time back in Beacon Hills to _heal_."

"Yeah, sure, I'm healing away. Medicinal doughnuts can only heal me faster, right?"

Stiles started making grabby hands at the box.

"So you agree that you're here to heal, first and foremost?"

"Absolutely."

"Healing is the priority."

"Numero uno!"

"You'll sit around with your friends, eating Reeces Peanut butter cup doughnuts, and watching cartoons, right?"

"Reeces...those are...YES! Yes, I vow to eat nothing but doughnuts the entire time I'm here. Have I mentioned that I love you?"

"I love you too, here you go," she handed him the box, stepped back and jingled the house keys just out of reach. "Good to know you won't be needing these."

Stiles had just jammed a doughnut into his mouth as he realized what she had said. Melissa grinned and Stiles looked conflicted between wallowing in the glory of what he'd just put in his mouth and spitting it out to voice his protest. In the end he just went with screaming into the doughnut.

"Just kidding," Melissa said, before tossing the keys to Lydia, "but Lydia is the keymaster."

"Can I be the gatekeeper?" Kira asked, sitting up, brightly.

Stiles forced his mouthful down, leaving his voice a little raw, as he wiggled his glaze coated fingers at Kira and said, "There is no Kira, only Zuul!"

"You know you guys are too young to be making references I get, right?" Melissa felt more sympathy for Derek now she'd seen the three of them in action.

"Your childhood movies are way better than our childhood movies," Stiles explained, then suddenly became serious and snapped his gaze up to her, eyes narrowing. "Oh my God, it's _your_ fault Scott never saw Star Wars isn't it?"

"What?" Melissa shook her head and held up both hands. "Hey I've never seen it either so..."

" _What?_ " Stiles yelped.

He hurriedly shuffled along the couch, pushing Kira over to make more space between them, and patted the cushion beside him.

"Take a seat," Stiles demanded, before snapping his fingers at Lydia, "Star Wars DVD, right now."

"Oh he did _not_ just click his fingers at me!" Lydia glared as she looked from Kira to Melissa.

"I'll make it up to you, but bigger wrongs must be righted...written...just put in the DVD!"

While Stiles geeking out on a sugar high would normally have been one of her worst nightmares, Melissa couldn't help but link her arm with his as she got comfortable on the couch. He made her take a doughnut and opened her a can of soda. He was exhausting, but he was so missed when he was gone.

When he was gone _too_.

* * *

The Sheriff and Lydia had managed to keep Stiles home for two days before he'd managed to pull the oldest schoolboy trick in the book. The Sheriff went to work thinking Stiles was with Lydia. Lydia was spending the day with her mom, under the impression that it was the Sheriff's day off and he was holding Stiles' shoes hostage.

He couldn't drive with the boot on, and couldn't walk with the other foot bare, so he'd been unusually logical and called a cab.

Not even Stiles acting like a normal human being and getting a cab to the McCall's house managed to throw Derek off his tracks. The disgruntled werewolf was waiting for him, looking furious, as he paid the driver and sent the cab on its way.

"I'm taking you back home," Derek said, stomping toward him.

"Thanks, kind offer, very considerate. I'll just be an hour." Stiles hobbled, unevenly, past Derek and towards the door.

"I'm taking you back now," Derek reached out with one hand to snag Stiles by the elbow.

He was surprised to find he'd missed. He blinked and turned all the way around, reaching for Stiles' shoulder this time. Stiles spun, fast, grabbing Derek's arm around the crook of his elbow and dropping his weight dead as he swung from it.

Derek dropped to his knees, Stiles jumped up on his good leg, then hopped back towards the house. Derek growled and pounced ahead of Stiles, blocking his way.

"Dude, seriously?" Stiles huffed. "I can counter attack, you being bigger and me having a busted up leg makes no difference. The question is are you really going to try to hurt you friend, who's smaller with a busted up leg, in public?"

Derek curled his lip and then swallowed down his anger.

"I'll throw you over my shoulder and carry you home!"

"You'll _try_ ," Stiles warned. "The only way you can beat me is to hurt me. Are you gonna hurt me, Derek?"

A low snarl rumbled in Derek's chest.

"You're supposed to be resting."

"I'd be more relaxed walking around an empty house, incident-free, than I'd be fighting you."

Derek considered this, then pulled out a cell phone.

"I'll call you dad."

Stiles laughed.

"I'll call your dad and Lydia."

Stiles' mirth faded but he still wore a confident smile.

"It'd still take her time to get here. I can spend that time taking a look inside."

"Stiles!" Derek snapped. "It looks the same now as it does every time. Nothing has changed. You'll stand in his room, staring at the blank walls, and come up with nothing again. You're going home."

"Not necessarily." Stiles pulled out the keys to the house, shaking his head. "I come back every time with more training, more experience, different perspectives."

"Real life training, real life experience, real life perspectives. This was supernatural."

"And maybe that's the difference!" Stiles shouted back at Derek. "Maybe this time, my distance from the supernatural will help me see it a different way. Take away the supernatural rules and my supernatural knowledge and bring some real world method into the investigation and I'll figure it out."

"Maybe if a doctor learned how to play the piano he'd find a cure for cancer!" Derek yelled.

"And if a frog grew wings he wouldn't bump his ass when he hopped," Stiles said, mockingly. "Oh and, by the way, who's this _he_? The doctor who cures cancer by playing the piano is a he? Maybe while all the male doctors are off learning another skill the woman who cures cancer gets to win the research grant to fund the team of women who cure cancer."

"Right on sister," Derek spat. "Let's get you home and send Lydia to investigate. You're right. Your chromosomes are hindering things."

"Chromosomes?" Stiles blinked. "Derek Hale is using chromosomes in an argument with me? Derek, shut up and cut off my arm, Hale? Derek, Lydia might be the kanima so I'll kill her just to see if I'm right, Hale? Derek, don't trust the person drowning himself to try to keep me alive, Hale? Chromosomes, really?"

"Yes, really. Really Stiles, I have to do everything alone, Stilinski. Stiles, God forbid I take time to recover, Stilinski. Stiles, I have to solve everything to prove to myself I'm worth anything, Stilinski!"

Stiles pushed the key into the lock, turned it, and opened the door.

"Take your pseudo-psychology and shove it up your-"

As Stiles kicked the mountain ash from threshold with his bare foot, a green glow swelled within the house.

"Stiles!" Derek lunged and grabbed him, pulling him away from the door.

"What is it, you see it?" Stiles tried to squirm free and get back to take a look.

"Put the ash back," Derek shoved Stiles back, still keeping a tight hold of both his arms.

"This doesn't work for me, dude," Stiles said, flapping the arms he was only able to move at the elbow.

"Push the ash back now!" Derek ordered, releasing one of his arms.

The glow was brighter and there was an audible vibration in the air. It was like white noise swelling towards them.

Stiles grabbed up a handful of the ash and pulled back with it, pressing his back into Derek's chest.

"What are you doing?"

"I wanna see what it is, just wait," Stiles said, staring into the light, now swirling into a mist and forming a shape.

"We don't know how fast it moves, come on, throw the damn ash." Derek was torn between pulling Stiles behind him and just throwing him over his shoulder and making a run for the woods. "Seal it in and then get a good look at it."

"But it wasn't there when the seal was there," Stiles said, inclining his head and trying to make out what the shape stepping out of the light was.

"It wasn't there when Melissa was there either, or me, I've been in there dozens of times and this never happened." Derek wanted to take the ash and throw it himself, but he couldn't go near the hand Stiles had clenched around it.

"And why is that? Let's gather the new information rather than getting rid of it before we know what we have."

"I'll knock you out, I swear to..." Derek's whole body was rumbling with the low growl he was holding in.

"Damn it, Derek," Stiles huffed, before pressing right back against him and throwing the ash up, so it fell around the two of them in the perfect circle. "There, you happy?"

Derek blinked.

"That was...actually a really good idea," Derek mumbled, leaning back against the invisible barrier right behind him.

"Ya think?" Stiles rolled his eyes. "A little faith in me, it's all I ask, but no."

"Look!" Derek lifted his arm to point but had to snatch his hand back as it came into contact with the barrier in front of them.

A figure, humanoid, was forming within the green light and shadows. There was a voice, wordless but it was definitely a voice, and suddenly everything from the haze came into sharp focus and Stiles inhaled so sharply as if the back of his throat had dried like sandpaper. He half coughed, half gagged, and felt Derek holding him up.

"Al..." Derek gasped behind him, just as disbelieving as Stiles felt, "... Allison?"

Allison Argent, formed entirely out of green light, wearing a long white dress which billowed in a non existent wind. The voice, still just a sound rather than any attempt at speech, was distinctly hers. She reached for them, her progress halting suddenly as her fingers hit the mountain ash barrier.

Derek felt Stiles start shaking, trembling all over, and held onto him even tighter.

"Don't break the circle," he whispered into the back of Stiles' ear.

"Allison?" Stiles' voice was still scratchy, but he was pulling himself together pretty fast. "What are you?"

They both waited. Allison, or the thing that looked like her, looked them up and down. She was assessing them and the situation there were in. She, or it, was struggling to understand the barrier between them.

"What does she smell like, Derek?"

Derek honed his senses and focused for a moment.

"Nothing, no scent or heartbeat. If I weren't looking at her I wouldn't know there was anything there."

"But you can hear that, right?" Stiles swallowed against his dry throat. "You can hear her?"

"I hear something."

The ethereal vision of Allison Argent didn't seem to move, she drifted and hovered, it just made her ghostly quality even more disconcerting. The sound coming from her resonated around them.

"Can you talk?" Stiles asked her. She simply tilted her head to one side and gave him a look of appraisal. Stiles swallowed again "Allison?"

When the spectre met his eyes there was no recognition, not of him or her name.

"It just looks like her," Derek said, breath on the back of Stiles neck making him flinch.

"Sorry," Stiles whispered, to Derek or the thing that looked like Allison, it was hard to tell.

The shimmering green light crackled against the barrier as the figure pressed against it one last time, then dissipated into nothing. Stiles and Derek stayed in place for some time before breathing a little deeper and allowing themselves to relax a little.

"Break the line with your foot," Derek said, calmly, "then bend over and grab a handful of ash. If she comes back put another line around you, don't wait for me."

"Okay," Stiles nodded.

"You're going to disregard the don't wait for me part of the plan aren't you?" Derek's shoulders fell and he looked to the sky.

"Of course," Stiles nodded and licked his lips. "So I'm breaking the line on three, okay?"

"If she doesn't reappear, make the line across the door again, alright? No hesitation."

Derek's calm seemed to be seeping into Stiles, who nodded and regained his focus.

"On three," Derek agreed, getting ready to step back out of the tight space as soon as the barrier fell, "your count."

Stiles rolled his shoulders, and braced his weight on his injured leg, ready to kick a break in the ash circle.

"One, two, three!" Stiles counted fast, swept his bare foot through the ash line, planted his foot and shifted his weight so he could drop into a squat with his boot extended in front of him, then grabbed up as much mountain ash as he could.

Derek had moved in front of him, to hold off the Allison look-alike if she did instantly reappear, and was on the alert for any indication of a green light.

"Derek, a hand?" Stiles was reaching up with his free hand, obviously not able to spring up as fast as he needed while keeping his balance.

Derek held out his hand behind him, felt Stiles grip around his wrist, and pulled him up while he pushed on his good leg. After a second to get his footing, Stiles hobbled two steps toward the doorway and threw the ash back down. The line reformed and Stiles reached forward to pull the door closed.

They both heaved relieved sighs, before Stiles locked the door and pulled his phone out from his back pocket. He took a step back and looked at the phone. He rocked a little so he could turn with his uneven gait, and swiped at the screen to unlock the phone. Derek was watching him, brows furrowed.

"Uh," Stiles said as he stared at the screen, "okay."

He opened the contacts list and started scrolling.

"Who are you calling?" Derek asked.

Stiles moved his thumb a couple more times and then looked at Derek, his expression a little lost.

"I don't know," he confessed. "I should...call someone."

He scrolled to the end of the contacts list and then back again.

"Do I tell Argent the thing that took Scott and those people looks like his dead daughter? Do I tell Lydia I just saw her best friend? Do I warn Melissa not to break the ash on her own house? Do I call my dad?"

"Who do you want to speak to most right now?" Derek took the phone from him and forced him to meet his eyes.

Stiles thought for a while.

"Deaton or Satomi, I should brainstorm with a supernatural expert and then at least have something to tell the others."

Derek nodded.

"So, Deaton or Satomi?"

Stiles watched as Derek scrolled past Deaton's name and onward, further down the alphabet, and smiled a little.

"You know me well," Stiles muttered as he took the phone back from Derek as it started to ring.

"I know Deaton frustrates you as much as he does me. Satomi answers questions."

"Satomi helps," Stiles agreed.

 _"_ _ _Satomi is here, Stiles,"__ the voice at the end of the phone warmed the chill running through him.

"Hey," Stiles said, feeling reassured that he finally had something new to go on. Disturbing but new. "Evaporated people, I just saw one."

* * *

Satomi had tea, lunch, and a little padded footstool beside the empty chair across from her at the table on the porch.

She lifted an iPad and took a picture of Stiles as soon as he started towards her, after his struggle out of Derek's car. Stiles rolled his eyes, all people did since he got back into town was take photos of him and his stilted walk.

Obviously, Satomi was preserving the moment because he had his walking cast on one foot and a rubber boot on the other. Derek had no spare shoes on him, but found a pair of rubber boots in the garage at the McCall's place. The thick tread was actually exactly the right height to keep him level with the boot around his healing leg. He looked stupid as hell but he'd not been as comfortable since he entered the gym in Baltimore for a light work-out.

"Can I help you with the step, Stiles?" Satomi offered him a hand as he reached the porch, her smile warm.

"I'll need a hand getting the boot off, the rubber one, I mean." Stiles turned, preparing to sit on the porch step.

"That's not necessary, Stiles. Come, give me your hand."

"I'm meeting your half way, I'm keeping this boot on!" Stiles tapped at his walking cast.

"No, _I'm_ meeting _you_ half way and having tea on the porch with you," she said, firmly. "I wouldn't make you wear slippers when you are healing your foot."

"I could swap the rubber boot for a slipper and hop?" Stiles offered.

Satomi hauled Stiles up onto the porch with ease, her strength was always something of a surprise when she used it, and manoeuvred him into the chair. She gestured to the little stool.

"Does it need elevation?"

"No, but who's gonna say no to a special throne for their foot?" Stiles lifted his foot onto the upholstered little stool.

They went through the motions for a minute or two, Satomi pouring tea, Stiles stuffing dorayaki into his mouth to the point of suffocation. Derek had insisted on waiting in the car, where he glared into space.

"So, you read the book already?" Satomi asked.

Stiles nodded, swallowing and grabbing some tea to wash his mouthful down.

"Mmm, yeah, I was housebound so it killed a couple of hours."

"Housebound?" Satomi arched an eyebrow.

Stiles wondered if eyebrow flexing was a werewolf power.

"They took my shoes," he grumbled.

"Ah, so the rubber boot..."

"I went on the lamb, barefoot," Stiles related his expedition to the house and Derek's party-pooping with an impish grin. Derek may or may not be listening, but Stiles always liked to conduct every conversation under the assumption that he was and he was furious at every word being uttered.

"You haven't changed," Satomi said as she laughed, "I'm relieved. After talking to your father I was expecting a serious FBI agent with no sense of humour."

"Never," Stiles vowed, considering another mouthful of food, fingers waggling as he made his choice, "I'll be the Peter Pan of the FBI."

"You can be youthful _and_ dignified, Stiles," Satomi scolded, but only teasingly, "just as I am ancient and unruly."

Stiles snorted.

"I've seen you unruly, my werewolf Jedi master, and there's nothing ancient about it."

"What is it my pack says?" Satomi paused for thought, before her eyes flashed. "Oh, when I get Medieval. I'd say that's pretty ancient."

"Greece is ancient, the Pharaohs are ancient, you're..."

"Choose your word wisely, Stiles," Satomi warned, playfully.

"Timeless," Stiles flashed his most charming smile, the one that very nearly works on Lydia.

Satomi lifted the iPad and snapped another picture of him.

"So, I went to Scott's," Stiles began, mirth quickly fading, "and this time it wasn't a total bust."

"Your evaporated person came back?"

"Not Scott," Stiles said, shaking his head and averting his eyes with a deep sigh, "but someone who's been gone. Who should be gone for good."

"Is it like the evaporated people of Japan? Was it a planned disappearance?"

"It's not... She didn't disappear, she died. She definitely died, not Peter Hale died, she was like _dead_ dead."

Satomi reached for Stiles hand and gave a squeeze.

"Who did you see?"

Stiles licked his lips, then squeezed them together, tightly.

"Allison, Argent's daughter, Allison."

"And you're one hundred percent sure she died?"

"Oh she died," Stiles choked out, nodding firmly and almost laughing, "she took an Oni katana in the chest, all the way through. Died surrounded by werewolves. Her dad came, my dad came, doctors, Deaton. She was definitely gone and there was no way back."

"So you saw a spirit at the house, one that looked like her?"

"I saw something at the house that looked exactly like her." Stiles gave a vigorous nod.

"Did what you saw have awareness? Did you feel any recognition or manage any communication?"

"She...it... It was looking at us, trying to work us out, or what we'd done that kept her for touching us. She didn't seem to understand us. I don't think she... _it_ recognised us."

"Was it like you and I or did it appear to be something from the shadows, like the Oni?"

"Not shadows, light, green light. Like a vortex of tiny light particles coming together and forming a person made of green light."

"Solid or transparent?"

"Mostly... the most Allison-like part of it you couldn't see through, it was too bright, but the edges were kinda translucent. You heard of that before?"

"She died by the Oni, but I don't think this is connected to Japanese supernatural lore." Satomi pondered. "None of this sounds familiar. I can put this new development to my peers."

Stiles nodded and looked down at his fingers as they traced patterns on the table top.

"Maybe you should discuss this with your group too?" Satomi proposed.

"Should I leave out what this thing looked like?" Stiles kept his head down, but moved his eyes to meet the alpha's.

"This spirit took the form of someone you recognise, that might be important. I also think you need to talk to someone who shares your grief for the loss."

Stiles gave a shake of the head and flung himself back in his chair, crossing his arms across his body and rubbing at his jaw with one hand.

"What about someone who shares the guilt?" Stiles mumbled, very low but not enough to escape werewolf ears. "There's nobody else on that list but me."

"I think you'll find that list is longer than you realise," Satomi reached across the table and he let one hand drop into hers.

"Her dad knows about the supernatural, he has a beastiery, a huge heritage and connections. I should tell him. But how do I tell him _that_? Of all people too, how do _I_ tell him."

"You are not an Oni," Satomi was stern, her eyes glowing red, "and you did not kill anybody. You ordered nobody's death. You arranged no death. You caused no death."

"Not directly..."

"Not. You simply did not. That is all, that is the end to it."

"You weren't there," Stiles argued, never one to back down from alpha-eyes.

Satomi's eyes returned to their familiar, ebony.

"Nor were you, were you?"

"How do you know?"

"I talk to Noshiko," Satomi smiled, a sly look on her face, "when I can stand it."

Stiles barked out a laugh, biting his lip to stifle it. He had no reason to feel guilty about finding it funny, but Kira was his friend and he wouldn't laugh if she was with them. Well, he wouldn't _want_ to.

"Tell them all the information," Satomi insisted, "take care of each other, give and ask for support."

Stiles nodded, though he was unable to meet her eyes after exposing his more vulnerable side.

"You would want to know," she placed her hand upon his and gave a soft squeeze. "You would need to know all the facts to understand what you're faced with. We'll all use our resources and get to the bottom of this."

Stiles finally locked eyes with her and gave a nod of determination.

"You'll get your alpha back, Stiles." Satomi said with certainty. "I feel this is the time."

Stiles' eyes drifted off somewhere, and he smiled the slightest smile to himself before whisper-singing.

"Maybe this time, I'll be lucky..."

Satomi's eyes widened and she sat back, staring at him. Stiles cleared his throat and shrugged off his embarrassment.

"My mom loved a showtune."

Satomi smiled, it was a much wider smile than usual. She was usually enigmatic, even at her most relaxed, but this was different. It was only just before she started speaking that Stiles realised what was happening.

"I loved West Side Story," she leaned towards him and clutched his wrists excitedly. "I tried to like Shakespeare plays, really I did, but I couldn't get past the language. I already learned English once, now I have to learn backwards olden times English just to enjoy a story?"

Stiles was almost giggling, he bit his lip and watched her as her eyes sparkled.

"But West Side Story was the same story but it was there for me to understand for myself, not have to be explained to me."

Stiles nodded.

"Contemporary stuff is just as great as the old stuff we're supposed to like." he shifted his seat around the table to sit a little closer to her, foot dropping from the little stool. "Quotes are another thing. Professors love quotes, right? Use a Mark Twain quote or Emerson, or Churchill...though a Churchill quote once really did help me, besides the point. Use one of the big hitters from history and they lap it up. I quote somebody who's still alive and in the entertainment business, just like Dickens or Conan-Doyle were, and I'm shallow and uninspired. Why can't I be inspired by the Rock, dammit?"

"The Rock?" Satomi looked lost.

"Oh my God, I'm getting your pack to marathon my top three, definiti-"

"Okay, somebody I should have heard of," Satomi waved her hands to get him back to the point.

"You know John Malkovich, right?"

"Oh I do, he's very good," Satomi looked happy to be back on familiar turf again.

"Dude has a way with words," Stiles said, with utmost sincerity. "Being John Malkovich was called being John Malkovich for a reason y'know?"

"Can my pack make me watch three of his movies?" Satomi teased.

Stiles couldn't repress his grin. He grabbed her hand with both of his and kissed her knuckles.

"You're the best surrogate alpha a guy could ever have, you know that, right?"

"And you, my clever boy, are the best substitute emissary any alpha stuck with Alan Deaton could wish for."

They both snorted with laughter in a comically ugly way.

"What is it with that guy?" Stiles sighed and shook his head. "How come he didn't get a visit from a glowing green Allison Argent?"

"Well, I think he would have to have gone to that house and done some investigating. He prefers to leave that sort of thing to you and Lydia."

"Y'know, when we've solved everything that actually matters, we're totally gonna get on that." Stiles' vow appeared to be serious. "Think of the stuff the two of could dig up on him. And have you noticed he always has that same X-ray of that same dog on his light box thing? What's wrong with that dog? Is it dead?"

Satomi chuckled.

"I mean it!" Stiles joined her in amusement. "That X-ray has been there since Freshman year, I'm an old man now and it's still there, I bet you."

"Oh a wager, I like those when you're involved. We will bet on this," Satomi's eyes wandered as she thought of her stake. "If the dog's X-ray is gone now, you will...ah, what do get you to do..."

"If the dog, the definitely now dead dog, the dog Deaton is probably married to or something, if it's still got it's picture up at the animal clinic and I win..."

"When I win, you will do something for me..." Satomi was still pondering, but teasing at the same time.

"When I find the stuffed dog, wearing Deaton's mother's clothes, sitting in a rocking chair," Stiles was cracking himself up, trying to distract Satomi.

"Ah!" Satomi had it. "When I win the wager, you will find a production of West Side Story, a good one, and you will take me to the theatre."

Stiles was taken aback by this. He stared at her, blankly, for a touch too long. He finally shifted, awkwardly.

"Well, I kinda what to do that for you anyway now."

Satomi beamed.

"And if you win?"

"If I win the bet," Stiles tried to refocus, "I become your emissary and Deaton's fired."

The laughter in Satomi's face fell away.

"Oh no," she said, crestfallen, "now I want _you_ to win."

Stiles was walking his awkward walk back to the car, after Satomi had helped him wrestle the rubber boot back onto his good foot, when he paused just as he was about to open the door. He looked back at Satomi, standing on her porch, watching him.

"John Malkovich said something cool once, well many times actually, but something cool and relevant."

He didn't have to shout, he knew she could hear him. Satomi simply nodded, giving him the go-ahead to continue.

"He said, 'the ghosts you chase you never catch'."

Satomi answered, and if she wanted to she could have made herself audible to him, but it was low. Stiles knew she was giving Derek a message to pass on to him."

He waved to her and got into the car. He looked to Derek, who looked pointedly at the unbuckled seat belt, and Stiles rolled his eyes and clicked it into place.

"So?"

Derek looked straight ahead and pulled away.

"She said that this ghost came to you."


	5. The Ghosts You Chase

_**The Ghosts You Chase**_

Allison.

Did the thing take the form of Allison Argent because it took Scott, or did the thing take Scott because it was in the form of Allison Argent?

What came first, the chicken or the egg?

Well, obviously it was the egg. A bird, that was not a chicken, laid an egg that hatched into a chicken.

Why does it look like Allison?

 _1 – It is Allison._

 _2 – Allison died by supernatural means and the thing is taking on her form as she is the closest thing to the McCall house to a supernatural death related to it._

 _3 – Something evil is using Allison's image to get them to go easy on it rather than fighting it._

 _4 – It's Gerard Argent's fault._

 _5 – It's my fault._

Stiles stepped back from his crime board, pen clutched in his hand, and reread the five points.

"Can I write on your cast?" Kira asked, as she looked at his healing leg, thoughtfully.

"I'm trying to keep it in good condition so I can donate it when I don't need it anymore." Stiles answered without looking away from the board.

"That's so cool," Kira said with enthusiasm.

"You can donate boots like that?" Lydia frowned, with scepticism.

"It's easier to donate equipment," Stiles conceded, still processing his bullet points with the majority of his focus, "a lot of charities won't take them because of the close contact to the skin. I did find a couple of places, though, a bit far away. Boston is the closest I think."

"Still cool, I mean that you thought to look in to that," Kira said.

"I saw how much it was on the bill," Stiles shrugged as he spoke, "not everybody who hurts their leg is gonna have the coverage I've got."

"I'll find a way to reuse it," Lydia said, as if anything she put her mind to was a done deal, "just keep it as decent as you can. No walking through sewage."

"Why would he walk through sewage?" Kira scrunched up her face.

"He's Stiles," Lydia said, moving to stand beside him at the board.

"We've never had any reason to think that ghosts were a thing," Stiles said, eyes narrowing at the first point on the list.

"Nothing in the beastiery," Lydia confirmed.

"They never showed up, despite everything else managing to," Stiles added, rocking back and forth on his boot again.

"My opinion as a banshee is that ghosts aren't a thing. None of my powers seem to involve communicating with the dead."

"Predictions, insights, locating, seeing the circumstances of the death...but no interactions or information after the fact."

"Never."

Stiles drew in a long, steady breath. He lifted the pen toward the board and held it over the first bullet point.

"Do it," Lydia said with a nod of assurance, "we've ruled it out."

Stiles put a line through point one.

Kira joined them, standing on Stiles' other side.

"So number two? What do we think?"

Stiles began to smirk. Lydia elbowed him in the ribs.

"Number two is asking for trouble, Kira, call it point b."

"What?" Kira looked a little lost before realising what Stiles was thinking. "Oh. Well, I'm very impressed. It's so grown up of you to have held back from all the poo poo jokes." It could have sounded bitter, but Kira was genuine with what she meant as a compliment.

"I'm a very serious adult now." Stiles agreed.

"Point b, then." Kira returned her attention to the board.

"Number two," Stiles corrected, "number two is a stinker."

"Complimented him too soon," Lydia said with a roll of her eyes.

"I think drawing his attention to it even more was the issue," Kira argued.

"Let's agree you're both to blame and move on," Stiles said, tapping the end of the pen to his lips and staring at the board.

After almost a minute Kira spoke up.

"Has no other supernatural death happened at the McCall place? I feel like there must have been. So much happened there."

"Nobody died there," Stiles said, still focused on his own handwriting.

"Allison didn't die anywhere near there," Lydia pointed out.

"But she was connected to the house through Scott. There's an emotional connection. She had a lot of time there."

"It was probably closer to her than the house where her mother killed herself," Lydia concluded.

"And the building she lived with her dad?" Kira asked.

"They really weren't there long enough to get attached." Stiles shook his head. "Argent packed up and left it with no problem."

"Scott's emotional connection to Allison, on top of it being a place she probably had the most...fondness for. A spirit or whatever it is could pick up on that and take her form." Lydia nodded.

"Okay, we leave that one for now." Stiles moved on to the next option. "Evil taking the form of one of us. Sounds familiar."

Lydia rubbed a hand down his back. Kira was thinking hard on this possibility.

"Would evil things be so arrogant to think looking like a dead friend would be enough for us not to stop them?"

"Evil and arrogance tend to hang out together," Stiles said.

"Arrogance doesn't led directly to evil, though," Lydia decided to pull a chair over to sit on as she continued the conversation, "but you don't find much humility in evil."

"Is it evil pretending to be good, though, that's the question." Stiles looked towards Lydia. "Anything from the beastiery leaping out at you on this?"

"You have it memorised?" Kira gaped at her friend, impressed.

"No, I just remember a lot of the general information, subcategories and such." Lydia looked frustrated and shook her head. "I suppose tricksters, but we could probably get more out of pitching this idea to your mom, Kira."

"I'll call her," Kira pulled out her phone and then froze, "when times zones are a little less anti-social."

"Now this one," Stiles tapped at the forth bullet point with his pen, "I think we need to discuss with Argent when we finish telling him about Allison."

"Agreed," Lydia said with a nod, "he's the devil Argent knows best of all. Oh and..." Lydia took the pen from Stiles and crossed out point five, several times."

"Look, I don't want it to be my fault but this thing took Allison's form, whose death my 'form' played a big part in, and took my best friend in his house, and that appeared to me when I showed up at the house. Too many coincidences there."

"It appeared to Derek at the house too," Kira said, "and at the time Scott was taken you both saw her and blew your fuses because you'd seen a 'ghost'. You didn't put Derek's name on here."

"Derek's been in and out of that house for Melissa so many times. Nothing happened. It was me."

"You went in and out of that house a lot over the years too," Lydia pushed him away from the board, both her hands on his chest, "and nothing happened."

"So what changed?" Stiles looked at her for an answer.

"You tell us," Kira picked up a note pad and pen and flipped the pages until she found a blank one.

Stiles slumped down on the side of his bed.

"Ugh, okay. First time, we went in thinking it was my attempt at thaumaturgy, and nothing happened."

"Thaumaturgy?" Kira looked impressed and sceptical.

"It wasn't a spell or a charm, voodoo and juju are both offensive terms coming from a white guy, and he's very good at Scrabble." Lydia explained.

"Oh," Kira said, processing this explanation and then crinkling her brow, "we concluded it wasn't your 'not a spell' because...I'd pretended to be hurt, right?"

"Right," Stiles said with a nod.

Then he blinked and slowly sat up very straight.

"Stiles?" Lydia reached for him and squeezed his shoulder.

"Every other time..." Stiles eyes were searching, but landing on nothing, as if he was speed reading inside his own head.

"Derek heals," Lydia said, eyes moving to Kira, "Kira had healed and was lying about being hurt."

"What are you...? I'm being left behind here."

Stiles hand clamped over his mouth as he shared a look of realisation with Lydia.

"This time was the first time you tried to go into the house." Lydia's gaze travelled down his body, down to his leg and the boot on it. "The first time you've been there with an injury."

Stiles suddenly groaned into his hand and threw himself backwards onto the bed.

"The pregnant woman! The pregnant woman was due to have her baby. She'd have gone into labour and the pain or something that happened when that happened made the Allison thing think she was hurt. The pregnant woman was taken for healing. Scott had Wolfsbane poisoning and was taken for healing."

"The pregnant woman's husband was taken too," Kira reminded him.

"You see a green floating woman taking your wife and unborn child away, I'd think you'd try to fight her." Lydia tried to be the voice of reason, while descending into panic herself. "He could have got hurt himself or...killed for trying to interfere."

"Oh God," Stiles whined. "It _was_ my fault. I was right the first time. Why did we just give up on that theory when we found out about Kira? Could we have got Scott back years ago? And what, is there an other worldly maternity ward where that poor woman is in labour for eternity? Did Allison, or the Allison thing, deliver the baby and now there's a toddler growing up in the ghost world?"

"Stiles, breathe!" Lydia demanded.

"This is one theory, we have other plans," Kira reminded him, "other investigations. We have to tell people about the thing looking like Allison and work out why an-"

"Because of me! Everything's because of me and my stupid 'heal everyone in the house' idea."

"We'll get Satomi and Derek and your dad, we'll call Mr Argent on my phone and Kira will call her mom on hers and we'll all talk this out together and cover everything." Lydia gained some flustered type of control of the situation as Stiles got, unsteadily to his feet. "You do nothing until we've talked about everything, Stiles, you hear me? Understand?"

"But Lyd-"

"Obay me, boy!" Lydia snapped. Stiles gulped and stared at her wide-eyed.

"Oh my God," Kira gasped.

"I am your alpha and you do as I say, right?"

"You've lost it," Stiles said, shakily.

"Sit down and call your dad," Lydia pushed him back down to the bed. "Kira, call Derek, get them both here."

Kira began tapping at her phone.

"Respect the banshee, Stilinski," Lydia said, holding her nerve.

"Respect? You called me boy."

"Dominatrix didn't work, alpha didn't work, Banshee didn't work, shattered male ego...bingo!"

Stiles shook this off and stood up again.

"Plenty of people call me boy, Lydia, to everyone at work I'm an infant. You've never..."

"Don't regress to that self flagellating teenager who would bend over backwards to prove everything was his fault. You're strong, you're intelligent, you're going to be able to work this out with me. None of that will be the case if you go over there with a broken foot and let yourself be taken just so you know what's on the other side."

"How did you know?"

"I know you," she said, fiercely, "you as you were, you as you are now, the you that you can become and the you that will self destruct unless someone like me cuts the right wire. Now, did I get it or is the clock still ticking?"

Stiles took in a deep breath and let it out. He looked at his board, then back at her. Kira was finishing her hurried conversation with Derek, over by the door.

"Defused," he said with a nod.

"Still explosive?" Lydia tilted her head to one side and smiled.

Stiles body sagged with the tired laugh he let out.

"You might want to rewrite point five," he said as he waved a finger towards the board.

"This is still not your fault," Lydia said, sitting beside him and putting her arm around his shoulders. "We'll solve this faster without you doing this to yourself, won't we?"

Stiles stared at his hands for a moment, before pulling his phone from his pocket and dialling his dad's number.

"I'll get Satomi afterwards," he said as he waited for his father to pick up, "I think you should see if Melissa can be here too. She should know everything."

The talking had ended up going in circles after a while. A couple of vows to contact other long time supernaturals with the new information from Kira's mom and Satomi, and gratitude from Argent for not hesitating to inform him about the form the spectre chose to take. Melissa felt reassured, mostly. A healing spirit that looked like Allison was a thousand times better than every scenario she'd imagined over the years.

It had been Derek and the Sheriff who had come up with the best plan to 'test the waters'.

Derek could heal, small injuries like shallow cuts could heal almost instantaneously, so he would enter the house alone and cut himself. If Allison appeared he'd heal before she could take him. They decided to see what would happen if she was summoned by injury and then faced with a healthy person. Would she just dissipate, or would she still try to take Derek?

"Maybe there could be some communication if she had no purpose when she arrived." The Sheriff pondered. "We need a human to use the mountain ash and seal the door in case she tries to look further for a person in need of treatment."

"And to break it to let me in," Derek pointed out.

He hadn't even inhaled in order to speak when both his father and Derek snapped, "Not you!" at him.

"But..."

"You're the first person she'll go for when Derek heals," the Sheriff said, pretending to be reluctant about this aspect of the plan.

"You'll be far away, surrounded by mountain ash," Derek added.

"That's a little extreme," Stiles huffed.

"Or you could wait at Deaton's," his dad smiled, knowing that was the last place Stiles would want to spend time, "his place is all mountain ash, isn't it?"

Stiles sat up and adopted his infamous 'contrary little shit' demeanour. The Sheriff hadn't seen that in his son for a long time and he hadn't missed it.

"You know what? I _will_ go to Deaton's. I'll tell him everything and he'll come up with some mysterious shady as fuck shit, then give me a plan to enact all by myself without any background information."

"I'll stay with him," Kira said, "I can't touch mountain ash, anyway and I'm less anti Deaton than the rest of you."

"Don't let that man drown him in an ice bath," the Sheriff said, pointing a finger between the two of them.

"Or let you check into a mental health facility that he knows has a hidden supernatural ward and a long history of patient abuse without mentioning anything," Lydia added.

"Especially don't let him vow to protect your family if anything happens to you," Derek said, bitterly, "he'll leave them for dead and then gloat about any survivor's poor coping mechanisms."

"Wow," Kira frowned as she looked from one of the to the other, "he really is a dick, huh?"

"You catch on quick, kid," Stiles said, giving Kira a wink and two finger-guns.

"Kid?" Kira arched an eyebrow.

"You'll still look like this in a hundred years, you won't be middle aged until you're heading towards a thousand, that means I get to call you kid until I'm an old man."

"You've put a lot of faith in me not klutzing myself to death way before you get old yourself."

"If klutzing yourself to death was a thing, he'd be dead already," Derek grunted.

"Funny," Stiles said with a forced smile, "funny werewolf is going to face the magical green nurse and crack some jokes."

"And reckless smart-ass is going to go to Deaton's to find the biggest gamble he can take with his own safety," Derek snarled, jabbing Stiles in the chest with a steel rod-like finger, "because that's the way you do things, right?"

"You don't know me well enough to pull that crap, not anymore."

"So show me how you've changed," Derek challenged.

The Sheriff leaned toward Lydia and spoke under his breath.

"He still doesn't know that tactic never works on Stiles?"

"I think he's relying on his contrary nature forcing him to do the sensible thing."

"I'm telling Mr Special Agent, who falls down the stairs because a dog is looking at him, to act the part he was playing when he got that call from work." Derek grunted to them.

"The dog wasn't looking at me, it was just in the way!" Stiles snapped, his fierce expression dropping suddenly as he grabbed for his phone and dialled.

"What...?" Kira began.

The Sheriff held up a hand to tell her to wait. Everybody stood still and held their tongues as Stiles waited for an answer.

"Yeah, it's me," Stiles said, starting to pace up and down and drag a hand over his hair, "you still know that operational medic? No the one with the ass." Stiles huffed and rolled his eyes. "The one with the ass I'm involuntarily drawn to stare at when people are talking to me."

Derek let out a sigh of resignation.

"She? I'm talking about the guy, the guy with the ass."

The Sheriff began to pretend he wasn't listening.

"Really? How many asses do I get distracted by? No, don't answer that. Put me through to her then. Anyone with the medical know-how...who I might want an 'in' with at a later date."

"God, Stiles!" Lydia scolded him.

"You have a beautiful ass too Lydia," Stiles said, dismissively, "but not as beautiful as our friendship."

"This is happening for what reason?" Lydia demanded.

"Hi," Stiles was focused back onto the phone again, "Stilinski, you may know me, probably not, if you saw me you might. I'm sorry. Can you do me a favour even though I'm probably a babbling nothing to you?"

"Does he get _any_ dates?" The Sheriff asked Lydia.

"Surprisingly, yes," Lydia nodded, eyes drifting down Stiles body as he paced away from them, "his ass is fine too."

Kira caught herself tilting her head to one side and taking in the sight for herself. Lydia quickly side-eyed Derek, as he almost pulled a muscle with his refusal to look anywhere near Stiles' body.

"Off the top of your head, for a layman like me, can you list me some asymptomatic conditions that doctors miss?"

Everybody looked at each other in apprehension, while Stiles listened intently to the voice on the other end of the line. Stiles grabbed a pen and started writing on his crime board.

 _Subclinical infections_

 _Mental illness_

 _Hyperthyroidism_

 _Multiple Sclerosis_

 _HIV_

 _Coeliac Disease_

 _Type II Diabetes_

"So Mental illness, that covers a lot, right?" Stiles began pacing again, nodding and giving a lot of 'uh-huh' type responses to what he was hearing. "No," Stiles said, thoughtfully, "I'm on leave at the moment. Busted up my leg. Thanks. Yeah, I just have a cold case of sorts, I'm occupying myself with it and I'm trying to work out if this...uh...angel of death scenario is just going on the appearance of illness and injury or if they had some insight to undiagnosed conditions. Thanks for your time, you're good to indulge me."

Stiles stopped pacing and blinked, rapidly.

"Uh...coffee? I could, I mean I'd like that, yeah. When I get back of course, if you still want to."

Lydia smiled and nudged the Sheriff.

"See, he can do it even without them seeing his assets."

The Sheriff slapped a hand to his face and groaned into it.

"Hey, do you know the guy with the ass? He's in your department and I never get his name." Stiles looked to Lydia, hopefully. "Ugh, really? You just call him the guy with ass too? Well, maybe that can be our next case. Thanks again Agent Finn."

Stiles hung up and looked to Lydia.

"So what did we learn that for?" Lydia asked.

"I have a mental illness and I was in that house all the time after Scott was taken. It only showed up when I was visibly injured."

"So this thing can't actually diagnose anything?"

" _So_ this thing could be tricked into taking somebody with nothing wrong with them." Stiles waved the pen in his hand like a magic wand.

"Why would we want anybody else taken?" The Sheriff's brow creased even deeper than it was already as he tried to get on the same track as his son.

"We don't, but now we know that _looking_ ill even if you're not can be a risk, while _being_ ill but looking fine can keep you safe."

"If this is all going toward you trying to tag along but not wearing your cast, I'll chain you up right now," Derek said.

Stiles crossed the room to almost bump chests with Derek, squaring off with a roll of his shoulders.

"I can pick locks, I can put you on the floor, as you know already, and your input is simply _your_ input into _my_ operation." Stiles was eye to eye with Derek and holding his own in the stand-off. "I will take your condescension up to a point and we're past that point now, so unclench and shut up."

Derek swallowed and silently seethed until Stiles walked away from him.

"That's not the job talking," Lydia said to Derek, her voice low but his werewolf hearing was more than capable of picking up every word, "he's always been in your face, taking your down a peg or two. So I think you're doing this on purpose, Derek."

Derek turned his eyes on Lydia as she gave a smug smile and flipped her hair, focusing her attention on Stiles.

"So this thing is focusing on ailments with symptoms, or things that the person is aware they have themselves?" She asked.

"Well, it can't be about the person not knowing they have a problem so the green Allison doesn't know either. I mean, I knew I had ADHD and that's a chemical imbalance in the brain, that's a physical problem that needs treatment. She didn't detect it, even though I knew I had it all the times I was there before."

"So, for example, if someone like Erica had been in the house she'd have been left alone."

Stiles nodded.

"The thing would have come and taken her if she'd had a seizure in the house. She wouldn't have been taken just because she _could_ have one."

"Does this mean she...it won't come for Derek if he cuts himself, because it knows he'll have already healed?"

"It could be that the only time a supernatural, with the ability to heal, can be taken is if they are dealing with something they can't heal from. Wolfsbane poisoning is something they need intervention for, they don't just heal from that without any treatment."

Derek make a noise, as if he was about to speak, but hesitated. He glanced between Stiles and Lydia, before clearing his throat.

"I didn't say you couldn't talk, Derek," Stiles gave an eye roll as he spoke.

"You said shut up," Derek grunted.

"Shut up with the lame threats you'll never follow through on. Come on, what is it you have to say?"

"So, am I not going in now? Or am I poisoning myself and going in?"

"We're wondering if she... _it_ may not show up." Stiles was frustrated at having to correct himself. It seemed to be important to everybody not to talk about this thing as if it was anything to do with Allison.

"You're wondering if your dad could be taken for undiagnosed heart problems, blood pressure issues, that kind of thing?" Lydia surmised.

"Not now," Stiles said, thoughtfully.

"He can lean out of an ash circle and break the line for me," Derek said, "we'll take precautions."

Stiles gave him a tight smile.

"I know you're both going to be careful. I'm just wondering if this thing will learn. We can't waste the opportunity if it can."

"How do you mean, learn?" Derek frowned.

"Oh," Kira's eyes widened as she caught on, "if the thing learns that Derek's a werewolf and can heal, she won't come for him next time. _It_ won't, sorry. But it won't be tricked again and this might be our only chance to test it this way."

"That's it exactly," Stiles nodded, "so if this is our only opportunity for this line of investigation, we should make sure we have definite targets to meet."

"I can make up an observation chart for them to print out and take with them," Lydia said, moving toward Stiles' desk. "Can I use your computer?"

"Go for it, don't look at the browser history," Stiles said, distractedly.

"Ew!" Kira winced.

"What?" Stiles blinked, then shook his head. "Kira! I was ordering her something for her birthday."

"Oh," Kira blushed and bit her bottom lip.

"Edible lube and a bib," Stiles said with a chuckle.

Kira shoved him and huffed.

Lydia was ignoring them and typing away into a table she'd already set up.

"I'm going to give you simple check boxes to make this as simple as possible for you guys," she said.

"Thanks Lydia," the Sheriff said, before furrowing his brow as he read the first part of the table. "Proximity and contact seeking, contact maintaining, avoidance of proximity and contact, resistance to contact and comforting. Wait, you said simple, right?"

"Yeah," Lydia looked over the table so far, not seeing the problem, "I made it as at a glance as possible. You tick a box between the positive on the right and the negative on the left. If there's no reaction or result you tick the middle box."

Stiles looked over her shoulder and nodded.

"Easy as pie," he agreed, before looking at his dad's doubtful face. "Or you could add a colour coding. The positive side could have green boxes, negative red and orange/yellow in the middle."

"That's not the part I'm going to be struggling to comprehend in the moment!" The Sheriff snapped.

"Think of it like observing a suspect during questioning, dad," Stiles put a hand on his father's back, "Parish is doing the interrogation and you record if they even acknowledge he's speaking to them, if they understand but refuse to answer, if they give the most basic, non-committal answer, make up an elaborate story, or go ballistic and get aggressive."

"Does it come for Derek when the injury is gone? Does it come for him and try to find the injury? Does it stick around and try to understand what has happened even though it's not needed? Does it stay away from him and avoid him like the plague...because he doesn't have it? Does it try to resist any physical contact or communication? It's as simple as I can make it, Sheriff." Lydia looked up at him and waited for him to agree that it was as simple as it was being presented.

"What if everything happens too quickly?" The Sheriff was sounding flustered as he saw Lydia begin a second set of observations on strengths and limitations.

"You just need to remember everything you see and document your observations, dad. Pay attention to everything, which is what you do anyway." Stiles put his arm around his father's shoulders. "This stuff is just for me, because I won't be there, remember? I don't have to question you about every little detail, I can look at this and then ask you about the most pertinent information."

"Oh, well that makes sense." His father nodded and seemed to be more comfortable about collecting the data when it came with Stiles sticking to his part of the agreement and not being anywhere near the house when they lured the thing out.

Lydia went on working on the table while Stiles and his dad left the room. Kira hovered behind her friend and asked about each category, as it was typed in. Derek looked around the room, awkwardly, and considered climbing out the window and getting away from everyone until he was needed.

Outside the door the Sheriff squeezed Stiles' shoulder and fixed his gaze until his son met it with minimal agitation.

"Mood swings? You okay?"

Stiles' shoulders relaxed under his father's hand and he rubbed at the back of his head with a deep sigh.

"It's not mood swings, I'm just getting pissed with Derek. It's like he treats me like it's four years ago, then acts all weird when I use my work voice, so I relax and be myself a bit and he's on me again to be mature. I just need to do what I gotta do without being scolded or patronized."

"It's protectiveness," the Sheriff said, with confidence, "while you're saying he only remembers you as an annoying kid, I think you're remembering him dismissing and threatening you in the past and assuming he's the same now."

"He _is_ the same, dad."

"He was threatening to chain you up because of protectiveness, not aggravation. Do you see his face when _you_ scold _him_?"

Stiles sighed again and rolled his head back so he stared at the ceiling.

"Son, you've taken all your meds, right?"

"Yeah, it's not that."

"Still going to therapy?"

Stiles looked back at his father.

"I only have to go once a month now."

"Feeling stressed?"

"Of course I am!" Stiles huffed and they both smirked.

"More than usual?"

"Not more than the circumstances dictate. Lydia checks in with me twice a week on Skype. I'm not having mental health issues, I swear."

The Sheriff released him with a pat to the shoulder and smiled.

"How's your cholesterol?" Stiles asked as his dad walked away.

"Fine."

"Blood pressure?"

"It's the perfect pressure."

The Sheriff waved behind him as he turned a corner out of sight.

"Don't get taken by a green mystical medic because you're lying to me!" Stiles called after him.

"It's asymptomatic anyway, she'll never know!" The Sheriff yelled back.

"I'm not patronizing you," Derek's voice was so close that Stiles jumped and turned toward it, then flinched away and nearly fell on his ass when he saw Derek was close enough to bump noses with.

"Damn Derek, personal space, dude!"

Derek didn't move back or apologize. He just wore his familiar mask of intensity and stared at Stiles as if he was a puzzle that could solve itself and save him the trouble of having to attempt to work it out himself.

"You know, Lydia pointed something out to me once?" Derek stated. "She said that you are a hot tempered, irritable asshole who never thinks before he speaks."

Stiles was momentarily offended before giving a shrug of acceptance.

"Sounds like something she would say."

"Unless you are so upset that you need somebody to worry about you, to look after you, and then she'd know not to joke. She'd immediately defend you from the most harmless of teasing and make sure people left you alone."

Stiles frowned.

"She did?"

Derek nodded.

"She said I did it too, I never noticed I was doing it but apparently…" He smiled and fell silent again.

"Why d'you bring that up?"

"Because she told me what it was that broadcast to her when you were that upset, you did it when your dad got attacked that time. You did it when you were being possessed without us noticing. You were doing it before."

Stiles shifted in his seat and then folded his arms across his chest.

"What was I doing?"

"You were being quiet...then having outbursts until you feel better."

The clock on the wall ticked, the keys of the computer tapped beneath Lydia's fingers, and the two men looked at each other. Derek almost smiled at him again.

"When you're suffering in silence I goad you. You're not one to opt for enduring things quietly, unless you think your dad's going to die, or you're being taunted by the most evil thing in the world, or-"

"Or I'm embracing the idea that what happened to Scott was my fault and trying to punish myself because none of you will do it for me."

Derek took a step back and looked at the ground.

"When you get like that and you're quiet I know what to do. It pisses you off and you think I don't respect you, but I know what to do and I do it."

Stiles nodded, even though Derek wasn't looking at him.

"It's different since you've been gone. You're different, in a good way, but..." Derek struggled to articulate what he needed to say. "I still worry about you, but I don't know how to read you. I guess I'm still trying to intimidate you, insult you, into being recognisable to me. Only now when I do that Agent Stilinski comes out and... I don't know that guy."

"There's no such guy, Derek," Stiles said, "I'm not an Agent and I'm not a different guy. It's like how you keep trying to go back to 'rip your throat out with my teeth' Derek. To me you're quietly reading a book, Derek. Side-eyeing assholes, Derek. Let's not jump to conclusions, Derek."

"You're the age I was when I first met you," Derek smirked and locked eyes with him. "I was a danger to myself and everyone else, you're not. You did all that earlier."

"Thanks," Stiles said with a huff.

"You know what I mean."

"I also know that when we first met your solution to everything was kill the person you assumed to be the problem. You ended up being the guy who would try to find ways to save people, protect people, defend people. You couldn't hurt Argent when you were possessed, you were the strongest one out of all of us."

"My possession wasn't even close to yours," Derek began.

"Mine was beyond bad and I was long gone and you wouldn't let them kill me to solve the problem," Stiles smiled a little and shrugged as Derek narrowed his eyes. "Argent told me many tales of the evolution of Derek Hale. He's your biggest fan."

Derek snorted.

"He is not, I assure you."

"He's close," Stiles corrected.

They both drew in a deep breath and let it out. The shared silence started out amiable enough but it wouldn't be them if it didn't soon descend into extreme discomfort.

"You're in therapy?" Derek blurted.

"You were listening?"

Derek nodded.

"I have a lot of anxiety, you know that, and I never actually got proper help after the Nogitsune. Damn it, I lost my virginity in an institution, while on amphetamines and sedatives at he same time. I remember nothing about it. I had sex with a girl with the mental capacity of an eight year old. I'm surprised I'm not in jail."

"They don't throw you in jail for being the victim of non consensual sex, Stiles."

"Maybe I did consent, I don't remember!"

"And that's why you couldn't have." Derek's face was softer than he'd ever seen it.

"I couldn't have sex with anyone until Lydia."

"Lydia?" Derek's confident demeanour faultered.

"She took one for the team," Stiles smirked. "She's the best best friend any guy could ever ask fo-" Stiles face dropped and he choked on his words.

"Lydia is your best friend," Derek said, firmly. "You aren't betraying Scott by saying it, thinking it, or feeling it. Lydia is allowed to be your best friend."

Stiles nodded and swallowed.

"Hence the therapy," he said with a weak laugh. "but only once a month because I'm in a totally good place right now and have been for, like a year."

"What happened to that girl, she was the coyote, right?"

Stiles nodded.

"Probably having her own therapy to understand losing her virginity to a possessed nut-job on conflicting drugs. I've no idea. I think we're better off not looking each other up."

Derek slapped Stiles on the shoulder and gave one of his rarest smiles, one with teeth showing.

"We're getting Scott back and nobody's going to get hurt or suffer any unfortunate consequences."

"Are _you_ on drugs?" Stiles narrowed his eyes.

Derek walked away and joined the Sheriff, ready to put their plan into action.


End file.
